The Bonsai Nursery
Photo: Rob Farrow / CC BY-SA 2.0, modified.
Overview
The Japanese Garden and Bonsai Nursery is a small Japanese-style visitor garden in St Mawgan, near Newquay, Cornwall. Nodaigarden records it as The Bonsai Nursery, gives the address as St Mawgan, Newquay, Cornwall TR8 4ET, and lists 1997 as the opening date. Its note says that, in addition to growing and selling bonsai, the owners built and opened a Japanese garden in 1997, with bamboo grove, tea house, Zen garden, azaleas and maples.
History
The garden developed from a specialist bonsai nursery into a public Japanese-style garden. Nodaigarden’s record is useful here because it fixes the opening year at 1997 and explicitly links the garden to the nursery business rather than to a municipal or institutional project.
The site is now presented publicly as The Japanese Garden rather than only as a nursery. The official website gives the address as The Japanese Garden, St. Mawgan Village, Near Newquay, Cornwall, TR8 4ET. The National Garden Scheme lists the current owners as Natalie and Stuart Ellison, while GAP Photos’ garden metadata identifies the earlier owners and designers as Robert and Stella Hore, which fits the garden’s nursery-origin history.
Today the site combines a paid visitor garden with free-access nursery, shop, bonsai and plant-sales areas. The NGS description gives the garden size as approximately 1 acre, while the nursery occupies roughly another acre adjacent to it. The garden opens seasonally, and the nursery offers bonsai, Japanese garden plants, statuary, accessories and advice
Design features
The garden contains several linked Japanese-style areas, including water gardens, a stroll garden, moss garden, Zen garden, symbolic tea house / Cha-Seki, koi pond, bamboo grove, waterfalls, bridges, Japanese maples, azaleas and rhododendrons. Visit Cornwall describes it as a fusion of Japanese gardening styles with exotic planting, including a Zen viewing house, koi pools, waterfall and teahouse balcony.
Garden elements
Bridges
Buildings
Enclosures
Waters and islands
Stones
Other elements
Current status
Extant visitor garden and specialist bonsai / Japanese garden nursery. The garden is open seasonally, with the shop, bonsai and plant areas accessible separately from the paid garden area.