Our one leisurely day: Bodnant Gardens, which nestles in the Snowdonian foothills of North Wales, near Conwy. On a hot and sunny day it took us seven hours to walk around and savour the horticultural delights of the gardens and admire the buildings.
Bodnant (Welsh for ‘dwelling by a stream’) was home to the Lloyd family from the reign of James I until the mid 1700s when it passed to the Forbes family. The parkland was designed into the style of an English landscape, and the earlier house was replaced by an Italianate mansion in 1792, courtesy of Colonel Forbes. On his death in 1820 the estate passed to William Hanmer of Bettisfield Park in Flintshire who extended the garden around the mansion house between 1828 and 1837. In 1874 the estate was bought by Henry Davis Pochin, Victorian industrialist, and his wife. There’s an interesting post on the people of Bodnant here.
2024 marks seventy-five years since Bodnant Garden was gifted to the National Trust by Henry McLaren, The 2nd Lord Aberconway.
Our first glimpse of the gardens was through the wonderful and reknowned Laburnum Arch, a fifty-five metre-long avenue of golden flowers. It was created in Victorian times by Henry Davis Pochin in 1880. He employed Edward Milner, apprentice to Joseph Paxton (landscape gardener, designer of hothouses, and the architect of the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London), to help design the formal garden around Bodnant Hall, including the Laburnum Arch, based on pergola walkways of the 16th and 17th centuries. It is believed to be the longest and oldest in Britain.
Rhododendrons are wild shrubs native to South-East Asia. They were first introduced to Bodnant Garden around 1900, many grown from original seed collected on expeditions in central China, sponsored by Bodnant’s owner, Henry Duncan McLaren the second Lord Aberconway). The plants flourished,producing some of the largest shrubs in the western hemisphere. Then some were hybridised to create varieties that were more compact, more richly coloured,with a longer flowering season. This is Rhododendron ‘Elizabeth’ a compact plant with vibrant pink flowers – the most famous of all the Bodnant hybrids and one that is today found in many domestic gardens. The gardeners at Bodnant are always searching to identify ‘lost’ varieties and propagate those under threat to ensure the future of the collection for many more years to come.
Two of the terraces have ponds, which are home to water lilies and a variety of wildlife (we saw ducks).
The borders on each of the five terraces are planted with careful consideration of the surrounding environment and are in keeping with the year of their creation. They are absolutely wonderful.
We also saw a Harlequin ladybird. These are about the same size as native ladybirds. They range in colour and pattern, but some of the most common forms are black with red spots, red with black spots and orange with black spots.Harlequins have attracted negative publicity since they were introduced in Britain 2004, but in reality they are nothing to worry about. They are known to reproduce quickly, gather in large swarms and compete with native ladybirds for aphids. They have shown signs of cannibalism, consuming the larvae and eggs of other ladybirds. But disease and predators are bringing the population under control. Harlequins can also carry an STD ( What?!) called laboulbenia. It is a fungus that forms little scales on the wing cases, and sometimes white crust on some parts of the exoskeleton, which can be seen with the naked eye. The STD also infects native ladybirds – the harlequin is simply another host for the fungus to live on. (the good news is humans cannot be infected. Sigh of relief!!)
I love reflections in water. The river runs throughout the gardens. Above is the Waterfall Bridge, with its vertical torrent of water on one side, and the calm, reflective pool on the other. Home to wildlife including kingfishers, dippers, heron and ducks. (and tadpoles, lots of tadpoles).
The photographer outside The Poem, a poetically-named mausoleum, built by Henry Davis Pochin. Located in an area of the Shrub Borders within the garden, The Poem is the McLaren family mausoleum. It sits on an outcrop of rock at the end of the valley known as the Dell.
The building below is the known as the Pin Mill. Originally built in 1730 as a gazebo at Woodchester, Gloucestershire, and later used as a pin mill and later still as a tannery, the building was moved to Bodnant gardens and reconstructed in 1938/9 as a pavilion at the south end of the canal terrace. The coat of arms on the building is of the family Surman or Shurmer whose connection with the building is a mystery. (One to solve sometime in the future)
The 2020 Sky Original adaptation of The Secret Garden, based on the classic 1910 novel by Frances Hodgson Burnettwas, was partly filmed in Bodnant Garden. The canopy of the cascading yellow flowers of the Laburnum Arch, the gnarled, fantasy-like woods and Italianate follies, all added to the sense of magic in the film. After a day walking around this glorious place, we could understand why Bodnant Gardens was chosen. It truly is one of, if not the best, National Trust gardens we’ve explored.
Judith Barrow 