Gwaenynog - A Welsh Literary Garden

The garden at Gwaenynog is not open to the public very often so when I heard, at short notice, that it would be opening on a Sunday late last Autumn, I knew I had to make the journey to Wales to see this very special place for myself.

The Walled Garden at Gwaenynog is the jewel in it's crown and even though I'd never visited I felt as if I already knew the garden well. This is because Gwaenynog gave inspiration to the childen's author Beatrix Potter who visited, spent time in, and sketched the garden on many occasions.

This garden is the setting for The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, one of Beatrix Potter's best known and cherished tales. Beatrix kept a secret journal and in this she described the garden as at Gwaenynog as "the prettiest kind of garden, where bright old fashioned flowers grow amongst the currant bushes."

It took me a few hours to drive over to Wales and it was a dull and overcast day but as I drove through the gates to Gwaenynog I knew my journey had been worth the effort. This garden was owned by Beatrix Potter's Uncle Fred and Aunt Harriet Burton and Beatrix visited on several occasions, possibly making as many as thirteen visits between 1895 and 1913. These visits gave Beatrix plenty of inspiration for her writing and art and several of her sketches of the garden were on display during the weekend I visited.

As I parked my car and walked towards the garden I felt a peacefulness and a sense of stepping back in time to a different era. The garden had an old fashioned charm to it and it was wonderful to see the Gardener's Cottage before stepping through the garden gate and into the walled garden itself. Tall stone walls surrounded most of the garden and I recognised these from some of the artwork. You could certainly feel and see the link back to Beatrix Potter which was wonderful.

It was a quiet day with few people about so I felt I had the garden to myself which meant I had time to wander at leisure, uninterrupted, and take everything in. It is testament to the family who are the current custodians that they have kept this garden close to their hearts and not allowed it to become commercialised. Instead there was a feeling that nothing had changed since Beatrix Potter was here many years ago sketching, exploring and soaking up the atmosphere of this garden herself.

Surprisingly though it wasn't always like this because the garden was abandoned after Beatrix Potter's time here and was neglected for many years. Parts of the garden had been ploughed up and horses allowed to graze within the walls. In fact all that remained of the former garden were two derelict greenhouses. Only when Janie Smith and her husband took on the property in the 1960s was any thought given to restoration.

It was Janie's daughter Frances who was behind the garden restoration intially, and at the time she was only twenty years old but she had some horticultural knowledge which she had learned whilst working in the Kitchen Garden at Chatsworth House. In 1988 she set about restoring the gardens and making them as close as possible to how they had been in Beatrix Potter's time.

A lot of research went into the restoration efforts and Frances contacted Frederick Warne as well as the Victoria and Albert Museum to help her out. Looking at Beatrix's own illustrations of the gardens was a great help and enabled Frances to identify the plants that used to grow there as well as the garden layout, design and sense of place.

As with a lot of success stories there was a stroke of luck involved when Frances met David Lewis a former apprenctice who had worked in the garden during the 1940s. David could remember much of the layout and planting plans from that time including the varieties of plant, fruit and vegetables which were grown. This was an enormous help and instrumental in the restoration project as Frances was able to keep the planting as true as possible to the original design.

There is a potting shed in the garden with gothic style upstairs windows and it's believed that this was in fact the building used for Mr McGregor's Potting Shed in the Beatrix Potter stories. This buidling was restored along with the garden and is now a display area with fascinating photographs which show before and after pictures of the garden.

It was lovely to see that the family had recognised others who helped with the work on the garden and there was a lovely handwritten note to acknowledge the help of a Mr Wil Pierce who assisted with digging in the Kitchen Garden back in 1989. I thought this was such a lovely tribute and spoke volumes of the family - both Janie and Frances, to ensure that his help was acknowledged and documented for others to see.

Beatrix Potter wrote much about the garden saying "The garden is very large, two thirds surrounded by a red brick wall with many apricots and an inner circle of old grey apple trees on wooden espaliers. It is very productive, but not tidy. The prettiest kind of garden". It was the inspiration for her drawings of the garden where the small rabbits in the Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies were overcome by the soporific of lettuce.

When I visited in late Autumn I was lucky enough to see many of the espaliered apple trees laden with fruit and similar to how Beatrix had described.

At the entrance gates windfall and other applies were displayed in crates and available for visitors to take home with them. It was amazing to see the way these trees had been pruned and shaped into an espalier design by the current gardeners and I imagined how that same task would have been carried out by the people tending to the garden back in Beatrix's time. I could feel the links back to the past as I soaked up the atmosphere of Gwaenynog for myself.

During my visit at the end of Autumn many of the summer flowers and roses were finished but the garden was abundant with apples and there were brightly coloured Sedum plants as well as beautifully pastel coloured Cosmos. Roses were climbing on wooden frames and I would love to take a trip back in Summer to see these and the herbaceous plants in full bloom.

Beatrix used this garden as the scene of two other of her unfinished books - Flittermouse and Fluttermouse as well as Llewelyns Well. This book begins with a description of the garden - "In Summer there were white and damask roses and the smell of thyme and musk. In Spring there were goosberries and throstles, and the flowers they call ceninen. And leeks and cabbages also grew in that garden; and between long straight grass alleys, and apple trained espaliers, there were beds of strawberries, mint and sage. And great Holly trees and a thicket of nuts. It was a great big garden".

Now the vegetable and productive part of the garden is separate from the flowers, roses and herbaceous borders and I was lucky enough to see these amazing pumpkins which put my own pumpkins, back home, to shame. I really should have enquired about the variety as it was a bad year for pumpkins and yet those at Gwaenynog were thriving.

Although it was the wrong time of year to experience the full colour of the garden I was delighted to see that many of the plants had not been cut back for Winter but left for the birds and wildlife as well as making quite a striking architectural statement.

Garden Writer | Guineveres Garden