Bodnant Garden

One of the great gardens of Britain, in the Conwy valley 15 minutes south of Llandudno

Bodnant Garden is one of the finest gardens in the British Isles and probably the most important horticultural site in Wales. It sits on a sloping site above the Conwy valley, 15 minutes south of Llandudno, and was developed over five generations of the same family — the McLaren-Aberconway dynasty — from 1874 onwards. The garden was given to the National Trust in 1949, but the family still lives in the house and is involved in the garden's direction.

The 80-acre garden falls into two distinct zones. The upper terraces, near the house, are formal — five Italianate stepped terraces with parterres, a lily pond, a Pin Mill (a small 1730s gazebo brought from Gloucestershire), and the famous Laburnum Arch. The lower garden, in the Hiraethlyn valley, is wilder — a deep glen of mature trees, magnolias, rhododendrons and azaleas leading down to the river. The plant collection is internationally important; many of the original specimens were collected by sponsored plant-hunting expeditions to China in the 1900s and 1910s.

The garden is open every day except 25 December. Allow at least three hours, longer in the spring rhododendron and laburnum season. It is 8 miles south of Llandudno, well signposted off the A470 from Conwy.

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A story
The Laburnum Arch — a 55-metre tunnel of yellow laburnum trees that flowers around the middle of May for about three weeks — is the garden's most photographed feature and one of the most photographed plant features in Britain. It was planted in 1880 by Henry Pochin, the industrial chemist who bought the estate, as a piece of horticultural theatre that few other gardeners had attempted at that scale. The trees are now exceptional specimens and the timing of the bloom is anxiously watched by garden visitors across north Wales.

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