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As I return to Blogging, I wrestled with where to start. So I’ll start by explaining the reason for my long absence is because last year (2018) I’d taken on an Allotment.

Having an allotment has been so exciting, as I’ve never really grown vegetables before.  Whilst it exciting it’s also terrifying, as I really don’t know what I’m doing. But thus fard it’s been great fun

last year i grew tropical vegetables. Such Capsicum, Chillies, Sweet potatoes, Pak Choi, Sweet Corn, Callaloo along more traditional Tomatoes, Beetroot, Spring onions, Peas, Potatoes, French beans, Purple Broccoli, Asparagus and Raspberries

I’m busy making plans for this year, 2019

Owned by
National Trust

Designed By 
Thomas Mawson

Dyffryn Gardens are a peaceful oasis on the outskirts of Cardiff, boasts 55 acres of exceptional Edwardian garden design with the unique Victorian Dyffryn House situated at the heart of the property. Considered by Cadw to be the best Edwardian gardens in Wales, the National Trust site features a stunning collection of intimate garden rooms, formal lawns and glasshouse showcasing an impressive cactus and orchid collection.

The kitchen gardens provide a bountiful harvest of fruit and vegetables that supply the on-site cafés. The striking great lawn, which can be seen in all its glory from the upstairs of Dyffryn House, flows from the property’s croquet lawn, which is kept to international competition standards. Offering an exotic feel to the gardens with all-year-round colour is the 22-acre arboretum on the east side of the property, holding one of the most significant collections of trees in the National Trust. This substantial tree garden is undergoing development as part of a five-year revival project to protect unique and rare specimen trees within the arboretum, including a number of Champion Trees.

Open from 10am every day except for Christmas and Boxing Day, there is ample opportunity to explore the gardens with their experimental themes, taste the produce in the cafés and shop at reception. A regular programme of events also means that there are plenty of things to see and do.

Looking beyond the botanical displays, you’ll see evidence of the garden design of eminent landscape architect, Thomas Mawson, who was commissioned in 1903 by John Cory, a coal entrepreneur and important figure in South Wales during the Victorian era. The originality of the garden’s arrangement was due to Mawson’s collaboration with Reginald Cory, John’s son, who was a passionate plantsman and funded several plant hunting trips across the world.

Stephen Anderton, of The Times calls Dyffryn Fernant, in Fishguard Pembrokeshire a collection of beautifully conceived gardens. It a number of small gardens within a large garden and the results are simply stunning. 

The owner says; she’s started from a complete wilderness in 1996 and was thinking only of having a ‘Front’ and Kitchen garden. Thankfully for us she went beyond her initial idea.  What I really liked about this garden was the mixture of naturalistic planting as well as the exotic and the very stylised.

It was such a welcoming garden and its tone is set by the honest system for paying one’s entry fee. A system, that always gets my vote. As member a RHS member, I didn’t have to pay but I did pay as I want to support this wonderful garden.

I loved so many elements of the garden. I loved the many varied sitting places that not only invite you to take your time but as with all sitting areas you get to see the gardens from different angles, which often give a totally different perspective.

I would urge anyone visiting Pembrokeshire to visit Dyffryn Fernant in Fishguard.

See link: http://www.dyffrynfernant.co.uk/