National Botanic Garden of Wales

The National Botanic Garden of Wales lies in the River Tywi valley near Llanarthney in Carmarthenshire. It sits on the site of the old Middleton Hall estate, first built in the early 17th century and later transformed by Sir William Paxton in the late 18th century. Paxton created an elaborate water park with lakes, ponds and streams, fed by an ingenious system of dams and reservoirs. The estate once covered 2,650 acres and included Paxton’s Tower, a Neo-Gothic folly honouring Lord Nelson, now owned by the National Trust. After a fire in 1931 destroyed the mansion, the land fell into decline until Carmarthenshire County Council acquired it. The site also holds the Llanarthne oak, named Wales’s Tree of the Year in 2016. The garden is both a visitor attraction and a centre for botanical research and conservation. Its Great Glasshouse, the world’s largest single-span glasshouse, was opened in 2000 and designed by Foster and Partners. The garden hosts rare plants such as the whitebeam Sorbus leyana and uses biomass recycling for heating. In 2019 it welcomed 160,000 visitors, with most income now self-generated. The Double Walled Garden has been rebuilt to display flowering plant families, while a tropical glasshouse opened in 2007 focuses on monocotyledons. Visitors find a restored landscape with cascades and views extending to Paxton’s Tower. The Waun Las national nature reserve, accessed from the garden, offers 150 hectares of wildflower meadows. The site blends history with modern conservation, featuring a Welsh apple orchard planted in 2015 and plans for a Welsh pomona. The Great Glasshouse houses plants from Mediterranean climates, divided into sections from Chile, Western Australia, South Africa and beyond. Paths wind through meadows and past the ruins of Middleton Hall, linking past and present in a living garden.