Bodnant Garden

Top choice in Anglesey & the North Coast


Laid out in 1875 and painstakingly landscaped over 150 years, Bodnant is one of Wales’ most beautiful gardens. Lord Aberconway of the McLaren family (which once lived in the gracious late-18th-century pile at the heart of Bodnant) bequeathed the lush 32-hectare property to the National Trust in 1949. Formal Italianate terraces overlook the River Conwy and Snowdonia's Carneddau Mountains, and rectangular ponds creep down from the house into the orderly disorder of a picturesque wooded valley and wild garden.

Spring is probably the best time to visit, but there’s something to see in every season. Key features are the 55m laburnum tunnel, a hair-raising howl of yellow when it blooms in late May or early June; fragrant rose gardens; great banks of azaleas and rhododendrons; and some of the tallest giant redwoods in Britain. Bodnant is 4 miles south of Conwy, just off the A470.


Lonely Planet's must-see attractions

Nearby Anglesey & the North Coast attractions

1. Bodnant Welsh Food

0.31 MILES

On the west side of the vast Bodnant Estate, a collection of lavishly restored 18th-century farm buildings now operates as Bodnant Welsh Food. One of the…

2. National Beekeeping Centre Wales

0.32 MILES

This nonprofit organisation is dedicated to encouraging people to take up beekeeping. Its corner of the Bodnant Welsh Food complex has interesting…

3. Conwy Castle

3.35 MILES

Caernarfon is more complete, Harlech more dramatically positioned and Beaumaris more technically perfect, yet out of the four castles that compose the…

4. Town Wall

3.35 MILES

The survival of most of its 1300m-long town wall, built concurrently with the castle, makes Conwy one of the UK’s prime medieval sites. The wall was…

5. Mill Gate

3.39 MILES

The twin-towered Mill Gate, one of two gatehouses in the southern stretch of Conwy's town wall, was built to allow access to the royal watermill, outside…

6. Upper Gate

3.47 MILES

The entrance to the largest section of town wall starts from the station and heads up to the Upper Gate (where there are great views over the town to the…

7. Plas Mawr

3.48 MILES

Completed in 1585 for merchant and courtier Robert Wynn, Plas Mawr is one of Britain's finest surviving Elizabethan town houses. The tall, whitewashed…

8. Aberconwy House

3.5 MILES

Timber-and-plaster Aberconwy House is the town's oldest, built as one of 20 merchants' houses when the town was fortified around 1300. Over the years it…