Lukesland Gardens and Tea Room on the edge of Dartmoor near Ivybridge is now open for the Autumn season on Sundays and Wednesdays.

Co-owner Lorna Howell explained: “It's been in my husband's family since the 1930s.

“His grandfather and grandmother moved in in the 30s so they ran it till the 70s when my mother-in-law and father-in-law took it on.

“My mother-in-law's still here, she's 94, lives in part of the house and is still interested in the garden and tells us what to do.

“John and I moved when his father died in 2004 so we've been here 20 years.

“Originally there was a Tudor house on the other side of the stream that runs through the garden, called Luxland Grove.

“We think it probably burnt down in the 1840s.

“This house was built in 1862 by a chap called William Matthews who'd inherited a windfall of money from his father and he loved hunting with hounds on the moor.”

Lorna continued: “Dartmoor's just literally just out there and he built this as a hunting lodge and absolutely went to town.

“You can see it's it's ridiculously grand-Victorian and Gothic and it's a great house but he spent too much and had to sell it after ten years.

“It was then bought by a couple called MacAndrew who were from a shipping company in Liverpool and, she outlived him and was here till 1929.

So to the very impressive gardens:

“It's a lovely Dartmoor valley.

“It's got the brook that runs through it into the River Erme and so it's got these nice steep sides.

“Vichy's Nursery in Exeter was very big at that time and they were sending out plant hunters all over the world so things like rhododendrons, magnolias, azaleas all the kind of thing that grow well in the southwest.

“There’s a lot from China and the Himalayas from South America as well.

“They did quite a lot of the landscaping and the planting and formal bit of the garden is in front of the house.

“When we came the kitchen garden had gone to rack and ruin so somebody suggested that we should make it into allotments for Ivybridge because there was a big waiting list so we have nine allotment holders there at the moment which is great.

So to the visiting times:

“We open in the Autumn on Sundays and Wednesdays, 11am till five, and we're open till the November 13, which it's quite late, but once there's been a frost, then some of our big Acers, which were planted in the thirties by John's Canadian grandfather come into their own.

“They are amazing and deep red.

“In the spring, we open March 16 through till June 9 in 2025.

“We open then because of that big tree, I don't know if you can see it, that huge big tree over there, that's the biggest magnolia cambellii in the country and its covered in pink flowers.”

They don’t open in the summer as they follow other persuits.