Coastal Cornwall: English Gardens & Country Houses
Price
Cornwall, May 11-17, 2027
$11,150 per person, private room
$10,000 per person, sharing
Chelsea Flower Show Extension, May 17- 19, 2027
$2,450 per person, private room
$1,600 per person, sharing
For our 4th annual House & Garden tour, Valise is partnering with acclaimed British garden and landscape designer, Rupert Muldoon, who has curated a stellar itinerary to the breathtaking coastline of Cornwall, England. The trip will include private visits to notable historic properties and gardens, wandering through quaint coastal villages, and many other bespoke experiences in the area. After Cornwall, your trip can end in London, or continue with a private, guided visit to the legendary Chelsea Flower Show. The group size is limited, ensuring an intimate and personal tour.
WHY CORNWALL, AND WHY MAY?
Cornwall is the long peninsula at England's southwestern tip, five hours west of London, with the Atlantic on one side and wooded creeks and sheltered harbors on the other, and lanes between them deeply hedged with greenery. What makes it extraordinary for gardens is the Gulf Stream: frost is rare, so things grow there that grow nowhere else in England. In the nineteenth century the great Cornish families sent plant hunters to the Himalayas, to China, to Chile, and brought back magnolias and camellias that Europe had never seen. Those plantings are a century and a half old now, and many of the gardens have stayed in the same families throughout — which is why the chance to walk them with the people who own and tend them is so rare.
May is when everything peaks.
A private journey through subtropical valleys, historic estates and the Cornish coast, with an optional extension to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in London for a full-day private, guided visit.
What to expect
Sample Itinerary
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International Arrival to London Heathrow
Tuesday, May 11 — The Journey West
You land at Heathrow and we're there to meet you. From that moment you travel in one vehicle with one driver, all week. By early afternoon you're in a small Somerset garden of separate rooms; by evening you're in Padstow, checked in to your room over the estuary, with time to walk out to Constantine Bay before our opening dinner by the sea.
Itinerary is subject to change
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Breakfast at Hotel
Wednesday, May 12 — A Private Collection and a Great House
The owner of a remarkable private garden walks you through the collection he has built from seed gathered around the world. After lunch beside a Georgian harbor, you spend the afternoon inside one of the finest late-Victorian country houses in England. That evening we dine together overlooking the Camel Estuary.
Itinerary is subject to change
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Breakfast at Hotel
Thursday, May 13 — The Helford River
Two subtropical valley gardens tumble down to their own private beaches, tree ferns overhead and water sounding the whole way down. After a morning in the first, we're guests of the owner of the second and his wife for lunch at their home, and then he walks you through the garden his family has shaped for generations.
Itinerary is subject to change
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Breakfast at Hotel
Friday, May 14 — Magnolias and a Lost Garden
You'll stand under seventy-foot magnolias with the head gardener who tends them and hear what it takes to keep them — what has gone right this spring and what hasn't. That kind of knowledge never reaches a guidebook. The afternoon is spent in one of Cornwall's great restoration stories.
Itinerary is subject to change
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Breakfast at Hotel
Saturday, May 15 — Plant Hunters and the Fal Estuary
A historic family estate celebrated for the magnolias, camellias and rhododendrons its plant hunters brought home. Then lunch on the harbor at St Mawes and the ferry (weather permitting) across the water to Falmouth for its galleries, bookshops and maritime museum.
Itinerary is subject to change
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Breakfast at Hotel
Sunday, May 16 — A Day to Breathe
Sunday is yours, by design. Rupert will lead a long walk around the Camel Estuary, with Sunday lunch at a village pub along the way and a taxi back for anyone who would rather stop there. Or keep the day quiet — church, the spa, a sea sauna on the beach, the bookshops, or a round of golf on the links above the dunes. We gather again that evening for cocktails and supper at the hotel.
Itinerary is subject to change
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Monday, May 17 — The English Landscape
You turn east, with a morning in one of England's most beautiful landscape gardens and a picnic in one of its temples overlooking the lake, before we continue on to London. The Cornwall tour ends here — at the garden or on arrival in London, whichever suits your onward plans.
For those joining us for the Chelsea Flower Show, you will check in to The Chesterfield Mayfair in the afternoon.
Dinner is on your own tonight.
Itinerary is subject to change
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Breakfast at Hotel
Tuesday May 18 2027
RHS Chelsea Flower Show, Opening Members' Day
For those joining the extension, the week moves from Cornwall's mature historic landscapes to the newest international thinking in garden design, plants and horticulture. After a night at The Chesterfield Mayfair, we travel to the show together and spend the full day there while the gardens are at their freshest, with Rupert on hand as your guide. Explore at your own pace, revisit favorites, attend talks and shop for plants. That evening we close the trip with a farewell supper at a private members' club in Chelsea.
RHS membership is required for Members' Day. We'll arrange it for you.
Breakfast at Hotel
International Departures from Heathrow or onward travel
Itinerary is subject to change