I got home at 1 a.m. Wednesday of last week from a trip to the end of the earth — or at least to a place with a name that implies it. Land’s End is the final step you take before plunging into the sea off the southwestern tip of England. It is as far west as the English can go without leaving the mainland of their country. A little east and south of Land’s End is the southernmost tip of England on a small peninsula known as Lizard. I can now say I have been as far east and as far south in England as a person can go.

Besides the picturesque names of these two landmarks in Cornwall County, they are in an area that is significantly different for gardening than other areas of the country. That says a lot for a country bent on making the most of a temperate maritime climate.

The trip was wonderful of course. As a garden enthusiast, the obvious time to visit the country would be in May or June. However, my husband and I had tickets at the end of March so we didn’t let a little thing like the obvious stop us. We went garden hunting in England — and were not disappointed.

We visited very large beautiful gardens built on a magnificent scale. Many were wonderful despite the fact that many of the beds were still under cultivation with the gardeners digging wheelbarrows of composting manure into the beds.

London, England is at the same latitude as Nova Scotia. As we flew over Nova Scotia on our way home, we could see it was still coated with shards of ice and snow.

However, the ocean currents are good to England. The warm ocean currents circle from the south passing its shores and warming it to bequeath a maritime climate that allows many plants and gardens to thrive. Because of this, the weather is typically never really cold, nor is it really hot.

The British work at gardening and they are determined to grow anything that has roots.

Perhaps this desire hearkens to the days when the sun never set on the British Empire. Explorers and merchants brought plants to the mother country from all over the world. Each of them vied to bring the best and most exquisite and they tried to grow them. Wealthy estate holders financed plant-finding expeditions and explorers would gather and glean from the Himalayas to the coasts of Bali looking for everything new and different.

England goes with gardening like Campbell’s goes with soup. But this relationship isn’t always easy. Some of the plants we easily grow in our hot summer weather — tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and pumpkins, for example — do not thrive in their relatively cool summer weather.

Such problems don’t stop the desire to grow them, however. Even in centuries past, estate holders would compete to see who could grow the most exotic plants. In an effort to raise pineapples, they built small enclosures topped with glass and surrounded by brick walls to hold the heat. They further warmed them with manure to provide the right conditions for these island fruits to grow and mature. They offered prizes to those who could raise them most successfully.

They became ingenious in finding ways to extend the season and warm the soils to encourage plants to grow using glass houses and pottery to enhance the requirements. They learned to grow such treats as peaches against stone and brick walls to warm them enough to produce during the growing season and they protected their other tender plants with shields of all sorts.

They built small hills with south facing slopes that were warmed by the sun to make their vegetables grow faster and better. Walled gardens further protected the plants inside from cold and wind.

The practices they developed continue today and we can learn much here in the Tooele Valley about using their methods to extend the summer season on both ends. Their vegetable gardens are already underway using season extenders and gardeners everywhere were loading their wheelbarrows with compost to mix with and improve the soil.

Rhubarb was an important commodity and few vegetable gardens were without the wrinkled leaves emerging from the ground. Cool crops like broccoli and Brussels sprouts had wintered over and still yielded their sweet tasty crops in the cool climate.

Although most of England has need for season extenders, it does have areas where the weather is friendlier to warm-loving plants. The key for us as garden tourists to find such gardens was to head south and west to Cornwall County.

English winters include frost and the higher parts of England deals with snowfalls, although nothing like the ones in the Rockies. But on our visit, the Cornwall area was balmy (translate that “less cold than the rest of England”). I’m thinking Cornwall is to England as St. George is to Utah.

The daffodils were out in full glory everywhere. You don’t see too many tulips in the English gardens in that area except in walled gardens. I assume it is because there are simply too many deer and especially rabbits.

They won’t eat daffodils because they are poison, but tulips are a delicacy for both Bambi and Thumper. While deer are plentiful enough, the bunnies are rampant. Cute, but devastating. I can see where the Peter Rabbit stories came from.

On the windward side of the cliffs near the ocean on the south of Cornwall County, hardy plants cling and grow. On the leeward side, however, the story is different.

Down in the ravines along the cliffs there are micro-climates that are so uncommonly pleasant that some of the wealthy, seeing their potential, purchased them to put in fabulous estate gardens where they could grow their prize plant finds. It was satisfying and certainly played into the ongoing competition. In these gardens we found palm trees, tree ferns, banana trees and a jungle of other subtropical plants that have grown safely there for generations. Who would have thought it possible?

This year the southern coasts of Cornwall have had some frosts and snow and the tree ferns, while not dead, were in the process of recovering. They were readily sending out new shoots among the blackened fronds. Most had been well cared for and the dead leaves were clipped off.

The banana trees had been thoroughly wrapped from the ground to their tips in a thick mass of straw and plastic, but it looked like some of them may have died anyway. As long as the roots are good, they will send up new tops since bananas are actually herbaceous plants and not trees at all.

Spring has begun to visit the moors. In these gardens, as well as the more tropical ones, rhododendrons, camellias and magnolias were out in full splendor and they were spectacular. Many other plants were emerging or in various stages of new growth. The favorite daffodils are often planted in meadows and they dot the countryside in clumps and swirls through the trees and shrubbery.

As we worked our way eastward toward London, the season had not progressed as far and the gardens were at a similar stage to those around here. When the land is in the throes of summer, the countryside will be lush and beautiful. Cooler summers, and regular rainfall does that. Add the care of dedicated gardeners and you have the perfect setup for amazing gardens.

The gardens and the countryside are enchanting, holding the enticing promise of spring. As we traveled I reflected on the earliest settlers to Utah, many of whom came from England. I couldn’t help but wonder how they felt as they came to the tops of the mountains and looked down into the valley of the Great Salt Lake and remembered the land they left. With them, however, they brought an understanding of how to garden. They left us a legacy as they diligently used their gardening skills to make the “desert blossom as a rose.”