The Gardens of North Wales by Annie Bullen

North Wales may be wet, but the climate, helped by the Gulf Stream, is mild at lower altitudes and many tender plants survive here. Rushing rivers and snow-capped mountains create a scenery that is at once wild and magnificent. Great stone castles, built by the English king, Edward I, at the end of the 13th century to subdue the rebellious Welsh princes, tower over the towns of which they are an integral part. Conwy, Caernarfon, Harlech and Beaumaris are some of the best known.

Conwy

In Conwy you’ll find one of Britain’s most-visited gardens, Bodnant, created by four generations of the Aberconway family. Bodnant must have one of the most beautiful settings of any in the country, with views across the River Conwy and over the mountains of the Snowdon range. The garden, run by the National Trust, has unrivalled spring displays of acid-loving rhododendrons, camellias and azaleas, a world-famous laburnum tunnel and collections of trees, including spring-flowering eucryphias, and plants wonderfully shown off on the terraces and slopes of its 80 acres. There’s a lily terrace, a canal terrace, a curved pergola and, in the dell, a giant redwood claiming to be the tallest in the country.

Contacts: Bodnant Garden, Tal-y-Cafn, Colwyn Bay, Conwy; 01492 650460

Anglesey

Not too far away, near the Menai Bridge and close to each other are two gardens and one of the country’s most renowned nurseries, with a stunning display garden and plants you’re unlikely to find elsewhere.
Plas Newydd on Anglesey has an 18th-century house, designed by James Wyatt, and a garden which slopes down to the Menai Strait with views across Snowdonia. The formal Italian garden in front of the house gives way to more informal parkland leading to restored woodland and waterside walks along the Straits. Here you’ll discover many tender shrubs, nurtured by the warm waters of the Gulf Stream.
Pencarreg Garden is open all year by appointment. Again there are breath-taking views (the garden edge coincides with the top of the cliff) across the water. This private garden has been planted over the years with a selection of shrubs and herbaceous plants, many of them unusual and rare, which give year-round colour. A stream creates more opportunity for good planting.

Contacts: Plas Newydd, Llanfairpwyll, Angelsey; 01248 715272 (infoline) or visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk and follow links.
Pencarreg, Glyn Garth, Menai Bridge; 01248 713545

Crûg Farm

Crûg Farm Plants, the nursery started by Bleddyn and Sue Wynn-Jones in 1991, has gone from strength to strength. It is a place of pilgrimage for many, eager to see and buy plants that the couple, whose annual expeditions to collect new plants are legendary, have introduced. Hardy geranium, hydrangeas, clematis and thalictrum previously unknown are just a few of the plants that have been introduced by the couple – among more than 13,000 different seeds and cuttings brought back from Korea, Nepal and central America. There’s an impressive display garden here, again with views over Snowdonia, but you might be too occupied with what is on show to notice the mountains.

Contacts: Crûg Farm Plants, Griffith’s Crossing, Caernarfon, Gwynedd; 01248 670232

Portmeirion

Before you visit the much-photographed ‘village’ of Portmeirion, tucked into the cliffs of a picturesque promontory overlooking the sea, you’ve probably built up a grandiose mental picture of large houses covering a great area. But extraordinary Portmeirion, all gentle baroque, soft sunshiny colours, winding paths, perching cottages, pilasters and pediments, statues, changing levels and pretty vistas, is small, intimate even.
Its founder, builder and developer from 1925 to 1976, Clough Williams-Ellis, put his heart and soul – and a lot of architectural salvage – into his dream of an Amalfi-style holiday village, with a beautiful garden, on this rugged coast. Williams-Ellis, from an old Welsh family which had inhabited this part of Wales for centuries, looked far and wide for a place to fulfil his vision of developing a naturally lovely landscape without spoiling it.
Many unusual trees, ginkgoes, plagianthus, Maytenus boaria, thread their way among magnolias, cordylines, drimys and Irish yews to great effect. There are lakes and the ever-changing views of the sea. It’s a dream-like place. Just be careful to avoid any large, white balloon-like objects..

Contact: Portmeirion, Porthmadog, Gwynedd; 01766 772311