A Visit to The National Botanic Garden of Wales

 As we were on holiday on the Gower, and this year is 'my special year of visiting gardens', a drive out, and a day at The National Botanic Garden of Wales was a first choice. 

We made our way to the Great Glasshouse, and on the way toured what I believe is The Wallace Garden where there were some interesting conifer specimens and a board about them.

Leading up to the dome, there is a large rocky area with scree, where some interesting groupings of Mediterranean plants.   However like most of the gardens, maintenance was below parr, and weeds really needed to be cleared.  I don't mean self seedings of the chosen plants but generally poor maintenance. I was beguiled as usual by the plants with the cistus showing off their rumpled petals and delightful markings.

A large white cistus, unlabelled but looking very much like Cistus 'Bennet's White', also drew my attention.

The Great Glasshouse is certainly a feat of  design and engineering, being the largest single span glasshouse in the world, and we spent quite some time examining all the specimens.  

Kangaroo Paws: what a name.  Although I have loved to took at these flowers in bouquets of mixed exotic flowers I had yet to see them in growth until I came across an excellent planting, with different colours.  They were just starting off in the display.

It was however quite hot and many of the panels which are meant to open to maintain the correct air flows and temperatures had just seized up due to lack of maintenance.  This is not just an observation on our part, but this situation was confirmed when we spoke to a couple of gardeners in the dome.  I wonder how they are going to protect what they describe as some of the most endangered species in the world, if they do not address this problem? 

After lunch from the café in the old stable block, again very disappointed in the 'not baked naan bread' i.e. only slightly warmed up partly baked naan, we headed for the Doubled Walled Garden, the Tropical House and the Japanese Garden. Again lack of maintenance in sections of the walled garden was evident, but homing in on individual plants or groupings I could see through that to enjoy the plants and their positions. These are a few which drew my eye.

Kalmia latifolia 'Olympic Fire'

Roscoea 'Kew Beauty'

Triteleia ixiodes 'Starlight'

Aquilegia 'Red Hobbit'

The Japanese Garden was in good order, and had a relaxing and harmonious feel to it.  It was a sure favourite and I felt completely content there.  

Although the picture above does not show it, I was inspired to place my Sorbaria sem with some Tiarella close by. 

If my garden could magically be transformed, this is how I would like it to be, but I have an urge to have all the plants I like around me, and 'restraint' is yet a quality I have been able to master. In my dreams, I would have a large enough garden to have a Japanese garden, and a good gardener to keep the larger garden in good order.

I enjoyed a tour of the Tropical Glasshouse, with many favourites there.  Afterwards we decided to have a venture out to the parkland, and although clearly marked on the map we just could not find the Veteran Trees, but we did come across a good planting of one of my favourite trees: Araucaria araucana better known as The Monkey Puzzle Tree.

I would have quite liked to have explored the wider parkland, but we decided to leave that for another time.  Our own parkland around our holiday home easily viewed from seating just outside our door, with a cuppa and some tea time nibble beckoned.