Garden of the Week: Aberglasney celebrates St David’s Day with its Daffodil displays

Aberglasney features gorgeous Daffodils Narcissus and Magnolias Aberglasney features gorgeous Daffodils, Narcissus and Magnolias [PH]

The national flower of Wales is a speciality at this 11½-acre site, where the 1st Narcissus usually flowers in November and the last continues until June.

Each year the garden adds to its collection, and lately hundreds of Pheasants eye Narcissus (also called Narcissus poeticus) were added inside the Rose Garden.

These are known for his or her delicate scent, and flower in April and will.

“These make excellent border plants as they’ve got multiple flower heads on each stem and, obviously, a terrific scent,” says Head Gardener Joseph
Atkin.

“Throughout the garden we use Narcissus in lots of other ways, consisting of formal bedding, mixed border plants, naturalistic drifts or in long grass areas.

“The neatest thing about Narcissus is that they are probably the good bulb for coming back annually.”

Aberglasney is a part of the only Historic Garden group of 7 Welsh rediscovered parks, woodlands and gardens, and have been under cultivation for greater than 500 years.

Among the highlights is The Cloister Garden with its parapet wall, which was hidden for hundreds of years and was used to look at out for raiders and safeguard crops – just like fortified manor houses in other parts of Wales.

The gardens fell into decline after the second one World War but work to revive them began 16 years ago because of a wealthy American benefactor.

“We spend an incredible amount of cash on plants, that is unusual for many gardens,” says Joseph, who studied horticulture at Aberglasney.

This year there are plans to construct a brand new horticultural college in derelict farm building at the estate, as a part of its on-going restoration.

These make excellent border plants as they’ve got multiple flower heads on each stem and, without a doubt , a very good scent

Previously this has included converting portion of the ruined mansion house right into a Ninfarium, a connection with the garden within the ruins of the medieval village at Ninfa south of Rome.

A glass atrium covers the remainder walls of the rooms, that have sub-tropical plants which include orchids, palms, cycads and magnolias.

In fact the magnolias are some of the star performers at Aberglasney. From March and into April the gardens are known for his or her 60 forms of the spring-flowering shrubs.

“We have a great choice of rare magnolias,” says Joseph. “The previous head gardener was a expert, he worked within the Saville Garden near
Windsor.

“They are all quite young since the garden has only been replanted for approximately 15 years.”

Some of those magnolias are available inside the Bishop Rudd’s Walk component to the garden, where you may see spring-flowering corylopsis – fragrant,
yellow-flowering shrubs also called buttercup witch hazels.

There are 40 or 50 ferns planted within the garden, with tree ferns, hostas, lady slipper orchids and a powerful summer display of
cardiocrinums – or giant Himalayan lilies.

These elegant plants have huge trumpet-like flowers, and Joseph says: “I am very pleased with them, they have got done fantastically well.

“The trick is not very to clutter around with them. They don’t want to be moved about.”

But essentially the mostsome of the most unusual feature of Aberglasney is undoubtedly the medieval cloisters, which encompass three arcaded stone ramparts.

These were hidden under rampant vegetation until the 1990s, when restoration began, and seem to be the only survivor of a method of fortified
gardening.

Research suggest that prime-value goods including mead, cider, firewood, herbs and spices, medicinal plants and oris root – used for perfumes – would
have been stored in the walls.

“The top of the walls are wide enough to take advantage of for growing crops in addition to waiting for raiders,” says Joseph.

“The thing about Aberglasney is if records have been kept lets possibly be the oldest garden in Britain. There’s nothing to claim we aren’t.”

Certainly the gatehouse and paths are 500 years old and there’s a 350-year-old yew tunnel.

The cloister square, now gravel paths with clipped yews and lawns, used to be used to grow vegetables, Joseph believes, but there’s now a separate
kitchen garden.

Stepover fruit trees edge the vegetable beds, replacing the former box hedges that were burnt up by blight.

Japanese holly (Ilex cranata) was used elsewhere to interchange diseased box: “It looks the greatest substitute,” says Joseph.

In late April the kitchen garden’s crab apple arbour is a sea of white blossom and there are hundreds of tulips round the gardens, particularly in
the Penelope Hobhouse-designed herbaceous garden, that is a mid-summer spectacle.

“From late February to July we’re absolutely outstanding, there’s so much to work out,” says Joseph, proudly.

And the excellent news for Aberglasney is that, owing to their benefactor, the gardens will continue to enhance each year.