National Botanic Garden of Wales

The National Botanic Garden of Wales, with the world's largest single-span glasshouse

The National Botanic Garden of Wales sits in the old parkland of Middleton Hall, a Regency country house that burned down in 1931. The garden, opened in 2000, was the first national botanic garden created in the UK for 200 years and occupies 568 acres of restored landscape, with the Norman Foster-designed Great Glasshouse as its centrepiece.

The Great Glasshouse is the obvious headline. Beyond it the garden contains a double-walled physic garden, a tropical butterfly house, an apothecaries' garden, an apiary, a 220-acre national nature reserve (Waun Las) of ancient meadows and woodland, and an extensive ornamental lake system reconstructed from the original Middleton Hall water gardens. There is also a working Welsh farm and a programme of seasonal events.

The garden is at Llanarthney, 25 minutes by car east of Carmarthen, off the A48. It is open daily; allow a half-day at minimum. The site is large and hilly — there are mobility scooters available at the entrance.

things to do sight garden
A story
The Great Glasshouse, opened in 2000, is the largest single-span glasshouse in the world — 95 metres long, 55 metres wide, and supported on enormous toroidal steel arches that contain no internal columns. It was designed by Norman Foster and his team, and inside houses a Mediterranean climate landscape with plants from California, the Cape, Chile, southwest Australia, the Canaries and the Mediterranean basin proper. The roof is set into the ground at a slight angle so the rising sun catches it from the east at dawn.