In Bodnant Gardens, near Tal-y-Cafn, in Conwy, Wales, UK

 “When the world wearies and society fails to satisfy, there is always the garden.” – Minnie Aumonier

===============================================================

(near Tal-y-Cafn, in Conwy, Wales, UK) Nestied in the Snowdonian foothills of North Wales, Bodnant Garden was forged by the Victorian vision of an extraordinary man, then honed by his descendants -- and is still today cherished by visitors the world over. Established in 1874 by scientist, businessman, and politician Henry Pochin, he and his family filled the garden with plants collected by famous global explorers such as Ernest Wilson, George Forrest, and Harold Comber. 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 abode [featured here] at the heart of Bodnant) bequeathed the lush 32-hectare (~79 acre) 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 pretty wooded valley and wild garden. Cared for by the National Trust since 1949, Bodnant is a garden of firsts -- home to the earliest and grandest laburnum arch built in 1880, to Britain’s earliest magnolias introduced from China in the late 1800s and to unique rhododendron hybrids which originated here from the 1920s. Today, Bodnant Garden is home to exotic plants from the Blue Poppy of the Himalayas to the Fire Bush of the Andes, as well as five National Collections -- of Magnolia, Embothrium, Eucryphia, Rhododendron forrestii and Bodnant Rhododendron Hybrids. It is also boasts Wales’ largest collection of UK Champion Trees, which provide their won year-round spectacle. In Spring, visitors enjoy swathes of daffodils, camellias, magnolias, and rhododendrons; the heady sight and scent of roses, lily ponds, herbaceous beds and buzzing wildflower meadows in Summer; a kaleidoscope of rich leaf color in Autumn; and sparkling, frosted landscapes in Winter.