Gardens of South and West Wales 5181

We depart from our pick-up points (London, Reading, Swindon, Bristol) and travel to Cardiff, near which lies the magnificent Dyffryn Botanic Gardens, a Grade 1 listed Edwardian garden designed by landscape architect Thomas Mawson displaying a series of garden ‘rooms’ enclosed within clipped Yew hedges. There is something to see year round at Dyffryn – a Roman garden; Japanese garden; fountains and pools and an arboretum containing trees from all around the world including the original Acer Griseum collected by ‘Chinese Wilson’. Dyffryn is one of the best 100 gardens in the UK as selected by the British Tourism Association. Our tour manager Tony Russell with join us here and conduct a guided tour of the garden. Lunch is available here (not included).

We continue our journey to Pembrokeshire and our accommodation at the Beggars Reach Hotel, Burton. Prior to dinner, Tony will give us an introductory talk on the gardens of the region.

Following breakfast we will travel to the National Botanic Garden of Wales in the exquisite location of a 568 acre estate in the heart of Carmarthenshire. Among the innovative and informative features here are the Great Greenhouses (the largest single span glasshouse in the world – focusing on temperature species, many of them endangered); the oval walled garden; the water discovery centre and the herbaceous boardwalk.

We continue to Aberglasney, set in the beautiful Towy valley. This is a superb 16th/17th century garden, which was rediscovered after 50 years of neglect and has been restored to produce a garden with immense appeal by a young and energetic team of gardeners. Set within nine acres are six different spaces with a rich and diverse collection of plants, including three walled gardens and the unique Elizabethan/Jacobean cloister; a walled garden of concentric herbaceous beds and a parapet walk.

After breakfast we depart for Dyffryn Fernant Garden, a plantsman’s garden, created from scratch by Christina Shand and David Allum. They have made a number of ‘rooms’ including an azalea bank, a bog garden and a fernery and camellia walk. These rooms are punctuated by attractive sculptures plus mouthwatering displays of herbaceous shrubs. 

This afternoon we will visit Picton Castle. The gardens comprise 40 acres of some of the most beautiful woodland gardens in West Wales. Discover woodland walks, a maze and rhododendrons. The Walled Garden has an elegant fountain, rose strewn arches and a door that leads to the fernery, a tranquil and fascinating habitat for less hardy fern species.

This morning we visit the gardens of Upton Castle, which consist of 35 acres of listed historic gardens, surrounded by ancient woodlands containing a number of trees listed as veterans. Within the gardens there are spectacular herbaceous borders, a delightful formal rose garden and a fascinating, traditional 19th century walled garden, now being restored to its former use as a kitchen garden. Rare trees and shrubs abound throughout the gardens and include a stunning collection of rhododendrons, tree Magnolias and Camellias whilst the arboretum lists amongst its many unusual specimens a large handkerchief tree, Davidia involucrata, Drymis winteri, Cunninghamia and the fern leafed beech Fagus heterophylla.

We then transfer to the village of Laugharne (pronounced ‘larn’, where the poet Dylan Thomas lived and worked in his later years and which provided many of the characters featured in his poetic works. You may wish to visit his former residence at The Boathouse, now owned by the local council and dressed in authentic 1950s style, including some of the original furniture, with a recording of Thomas’s distinctive voice playing in the background (entry not included). This is your chance to ‘rage against the dying of the light’.

Our final visit today is to the private garden of Llwyngarreg, on the Carmarthenshire/Pembrokeshire border. The owners’ objective is to grow the plants they admire in an aesthetically pleasing way, creating drama and colour all year round. They grow a lot of plants which do well in wet, mild, West Wales; Rhododendron, Acer, Primula, Bamboos, blue Meconopsis, Magnolia and some which have been a surprise: Dierama, Agapanthus, Tigridia, and Colocasia.

 

We return to our hotel.

Following breakfast we check out of our hotel and travel to Dewstow Gardens, a garden of tunnels and underground grottoes that was buried underneath thousands of tons of soil for over 50 years until 2000 when the gardens were rediscovered and renovated. The gardens contain many ponds and rills but interestingly a labyrinth of underground grottoes, tunnels and sunken ferneries. 

Following this, our final visit, we return to our original departure points.