If there is a garden not listed, or you have additional details of a garden already listed that you think should be included in this Wales regional digest of gardens and arboretums please We will respond quickly and direct you to our Upload Area where you can submit a photo of the garden and descriptive text. Gardens need not be large but should be 'memorable', 'outstanding' or of 'significant importance'.  If a garden does not have web site, a brief description would be appreciated.

Bodnant Garden (NT) Tal-y-Cafn, Colwyn Bay, Conwy.

Photo © National Trust

The 32 hectare garden at Bodnant is one of the finest in the world, situated above the River Conwy and looking across the valley towards the Snowdon range. There are dramatic colours throughout the season, with fine collections of rhododendrons, magnolias and camellias in early spring, and the spectacular laburnum arch, a 55yd tunnel of golden blooms from mid-May to early June. Herbaceous borders, roses, hydrangeas, water lilies and clematis delight throughout the summer, with superb autumn colours during October. The garden is in two parts. The upper part around the house consists of the Terrace Gardens as well as informal lawns shaded by trees. The lower portion, known as 'The Dell', is formed by the valley of the River Hiraethlyn and contains the pinetum and wooded valley, stream and wild garden below.

In March and April masses of daffodils and other spring bulbs make a very colourful display. Pride of place amongst the shrubs is held by rhododendrons, magnolias and camellias, which flower from March until the end of June. The famous laburnum arch, embothriums and many of the azaleas are at their best at the end of May/early June. In summer the Terrace Gardens are very colourful with herbaceous borders, roses, water lilies, clematis and unusual wall shrubs and climbers. Eucryphias and hydrangeas are a special feature. National Collections of Embothrium, Eucryphia, Magnolia (spp.) and Rhododendron forrestii.

Clyne Gardens Mill Lane, Blackpill, Swansea, West Glamorgan.

Photo © 2007 City and County of Swansea

A large 20 hectare well-kept garden in a broad valley overlooking Swansea Bay, with an outstanding collection of rhododendrons, including the National Collections of Triflorum and Pieris. Fine bog gardens and many other rare and interesting trees and shrubs.

Colby Woodland Gardens (NT) Amroth, Narberth, Pembrokeshire.

Photo © Steve Whitehead

Attractive woodland gardens (8-acres) with a fine collection of rhododendrons and azaleas. The early 19th century house is not open but the owners kindly allow access to the walled garden during visiting hours. There are walks through secluded valleys along open and wooded pathways.

Dewstow Gardens Dewstow House, Caerwent, Monmouthshire.

Photo © 2005 www.dewstow.co.uk

Dewstow gardens are the recently rediscovered gardens and landscapes created around the turn of the century by "James Pulham & Sons" landscapers, Rock Builders and Garden Designers.

The gardens had been buried around the 1940s and 50s and although some where in a very poor condition, other parts remained as good as the day it was built. Most of the repairs have now been completed during a massive restoration operation which began in 2000. The gardens contain many ponds and rills but interestingly, underground grottoes, tunnels and sunken ferneries.

The rock gardens are made up of a mixture of real stone and faced stone using various types of Pulhamite. The site is approximately 8 acres and we hope to renovate as much as we possibly can and have landscaped and replanted the gardens in the past 3 years. The gardens are open for general viewing daily from Monday March 19th Sunday until October 28th from 10.00 a.m. until last entry at 4.30 p.m. .

Dyffryn Garden & Arboretum St. Nicholas, South Glamorgan.

Photo © www.valeofglamorgan.gov.uk

Only six miles west of the centre of Cardiff, in the heart of the Vale of Glamorgan countryside, Dyffryn Gardens is an exceptional example of Edwardian garden design. At over 55 acres it's amongst the most beautiful gardens in Wales.

Mainly designed and created by Thomas Mawson, a leading landscape architect of the time, between 1906 and 1912, for Reginald Cory, a notable horticulturalist with a particular interest in newly introduced plants from eastern Asia.

Dyffryn is an outstanding Grade 1 registered garden featuring a stunning collection of intimate garden rooms, formal lawns, seasonal bedding, a statuary collection and much more. The gardens also boast an extensive Arboretum featuring trees from all over the world, Dyffryn is truly a garden for all seasons.

Erddig (NT) nr. Wrexham, Flintshire.

Photo © National Trust

A large walled garden restored to its 18th century formal design with Victorian parterre and yew walk; also contains the National Collection of Hedera. Surrounding parkland with extensive woods.

National Botanic Garden of Wales Llanarthne, Carmarthenshire.

Photo © 2012 National Botanic Garden of Wales

Working with the National Museum of Wales and the Countryside Council for Wales, the Garden is collecting the seeds of, and propagating, some of Wales's rarest plants. These include Britain's rarest and most critically-endangered trees, the Ley's Whitebeam (Sorbus leyana) and a hawkweed that only grows naturally on rocks around a single waterfall in the Brecon Beacons.

The Garden's estate is managed as a low intensity organic farm. Its flocks of sheep and herds of Black Welsh cattle are controlled to conserve and increase the range of many rare and nationally declining native wild plants and fungi. These include the greater butterfly orchid, whorled caraway and waxcap fungi.

The Great Glasshouse, the Garden's iconic visitor attraction which houses plants from the Earth's Mediterranean climatic regions, doubles up as a refuge for some of the world's rarest plants. An example of this is McCutcheon's Grevillea (Grevillea maccutcheonii). Five years ago, there were only 10 of these small Western Australian shrubs left in the wild, all growing together in one small patch. One of these plants was micropropagated at King's park Botanic Garden in Perth, Western Australia and sent to the National Botanic Garden of Wales in 1999. Visitors to the Great Glasshouse saw its lovely red and yellow flowers for the first time in 2003.

Plas Newydd (NT) Llanfairpwll, Anglesey.

Photo © National Trust

A fine spring garden and Australasian arboretum with an understorey of shrubs and wild flowers, as well as a summer terrace and, later massed hydrangeas and autumn colour. A woodland walk gives access to a marine walk on the Menai Strait.

Plas Yn Rhiw (NT) Rhiw, Pwllheli, Gwynedd.

Photo © National Trust

The house was rescued from neglect and lovingly restored by the three Keating sisters, who bought it in 1938. The ornamental gardens have flowering trees and shrubs, divided by box hedges and grass paths, rising behind to the snowdrop wood.

The views from the grounds and gardens across Cardigan Bay are among the most spectacular in Britain.

Powis Castle (NT) Welshpool, Powys.

Photo © National Trust

The world-famous garden, overhung with clipped yews, shelters rare and tender plants. Laid out under the influence of Italian and French styles, it retains its original lead statues and an orangery on the terraces. High on a rock above the terraces, the castle, originally built circa 1200, began life as a medieval fortress. National Collections of Aralia and Laburnum.

Veddw House Garden Devauden, Monmouthshire.

Photo © Charles Hawes www.veddw.com

The garden is set in the wonderful countryside of the Welsh border above Tintern. There are two acres of ornamental garden and two acres of woodland. A notable addition to the garden is the dramatic reflecting pool, but many people's favourite parts will still be the ornamental vegetable plot (getting more ornamental and less vegetable every year) with its rose border, brick paths and clematis.

Located deep in the heart of Monmouthshire, Veddw House Garden has been created through more than 20 years of patient work by Anne Wareham and Charles Hawes. Anne was recently described in the Telegraph as one of Britain’s most influential gardeners.

The owners have a great interest in the local landscape history and have incorporated this interest into the garden design, in particular in a large parterre of grasses in a pattern of box hedges based on the local Tithe Map of 1842.

Anne Wareham is a garden writer and recently appeared as a garden judge in Channel 5's prime time garden programme 'I've got Britain's Best Home Garden.' Charles Hawes is a prize winning garden photographer, regularly working for Country Life, the English Garden and other magazines, books and newspapers in the UK and abroad.

The garden is starred in the Good Gardens Guide and is an RHS recommended garden.