A hillside garden above the Conwy valley, best known for a 55-metre tunnel of yellow laburnum that flowers for a few weeks each spring
Open to visitorsa National Trust place — check opening times and admission before you go
Henry Pochin, a Victorian chemist with a fortune and a slope above the River Conwy, began planting Bodnant in the 1870s. His most-photographed idea came in 1880: a 55-metre walk trained over with laburnum, which for two or three weeks around late May and early June turns into a tunnel of hanging yellow flowers. It is reckoned the longest and oldest laburnum arch in Britain, and the garden gets busy while it lasts.
There is a great deal more, spread over a steep site. The formal Italianate terraces below the house were laid out in the early twentieth century by Pochin’s grandson, Henry McLaren, the second Lord Aberconway, and they step down toward a wooded valley called the Dell, where a stream runs under towering conifers, some of the tallest trees in Wales. Rhododendrons, magnolias and camellias carry the colour through spring, and the terraces open out west to the Carneddau mountains of Eryri.
The family gave Bodnant to the National Trust in 1949. It is a paid garden with set opening hours, so it is worth checking the times and the state of the laburnum before a long drive. Castell Conwy and the walled town beside it are a short way north, and the separate Bodnant Welsh Food Centre sits just up the road if you want lunch.
