With its hillside setting the garden’s 32 hectares (80 acres) drop dramatically from manicured lawns and grand, flower-filled terraces, through buzzing wildflower meadows and shrub-filled glades, into awe-inspiring dells of water gardens and towering trees.
Established in 1874 by scientist, businessman and politician Henry Pochin, he and his family filled the garden with plants collected by famous global explorers such as Ernest Wilson, George Forrest and Harold Comber. Cared for by the National Trust since 1949, Bodnant is a garden of firsts – home to the earliest and grandest laburnum arch built in 1880, to Britain’s earliest magnolias introduced from China in the late 1800s and to unique rhododendron hybrids which were born and bred here from the 1920s.
