The day at Bodnant
We spent over four hours walking around the Bodnant Garden/Arboretum/Park with Maggie & Geoff in the lead. It is an amazing garden, one of the greatest I’ve ever visited. While impossible for me to give even a satisfying portrait of its richness, I’ll list a few of my observations and memories from the day.
• Last year we had allowed our membership in the National Trust to lapse, so we began the visit by paying £139 for a joint one-year membership. Today’s admission without membership would have been £38. Visits to three more National Trust sites and we could break even.
• Our first stop was the famous Liburnum Walk. The vines were quite bare today, just a few lingering leaves. But without leaves or flowers, it was easier to see the work required each year in pruning and tying the limbs in place so the blossoms hang down like pendants. One of the signs along the walk informed us that the original liburnum have been replaced by a new variety with larger blooms.
• Most of the walkways we used for walking through the garden were composed of a hard dark gravel, wheelchair friendly, virtually no weeds. We encountered just a few spots where it was muddy and would have been difficult for a wheelchair to navigate.
• This garden has some impressive trees. Among the notables were several giant sequoias, planted in the late 1890s. Multiple signs requested that visitors not touch the trees since such contact with humans is potentially harmful. We obeyed the request. The garden also has an impressive collection of maple trees, including many varieties of Japanese maples.
• On several occasions we passed by gardening crews cleaning up beds. We saw perhaps ten workers, an even mix of men and women. In most instances the gardeners were on their hands and knees, trimming foliage and putting cuttings into bags.
• We saw hundreds of hellebores, a plant that plays a prominent role in many borders under trees; the hellebores are frequently used as a ground cover surrounding larger, specimen plants.
• The formal perennial flower gardens on the terraces nearest the Bodnant “manor” were in a traditional border style with large clumps running shoulder-to-shoulder with their neighbors. But most of the garden is shady woodlands with distinct separation in space between each featured plant. Based on the plant ID signs, it appears the woodland beds include large masses of spring-flowering bulbs that disappear in the summer.
• Most of the plants were clearly labeled with the binomial genus-species identification, though in some instances the variety name was also given. Some signs also indicated a plant’s native location but common names were not provided.
• We saw many hydrangea, with some blue and white varieties still in bloom, often in areas that would receive minimal direct sunshine. We also saw many rhododendron (a few in bloom), many camellia (a few in bloom), and many magnolias (not in bloom).
Bodnant Photos