National Botanic Garden of Wales

[apothecary]

Actually, I was just wondering if this was really a relevant topic for your club (rock gardens?) and then it occurred to me that my entire Apothecaries' Garden here is covered in slate and boulders (much to my dismay most of the time) so I suppose I have the perfect excuse to talk about it endlessly.  You'll wish you'd never asked!!! !!! 

[ian mcenery]

Kristina the garden looks marvellous so its now on the list of places to visit. Also very interested to hear about the local history and yourself

[David Shaw]

Kristina, this seems to be a very interesting new topic that is unfolding. Yes, please tell us more.

[apothecary]

How about I do a sort of journal of a bit of the garden at a time, when I have time...

To begin with, the history of the estate.  Everything I now write is subject to change (and I take no responsibility for any inaccuracies) since much of what we know about the estate has been pieced together from a mixture of reliable and not so reliable sources.  A lot of history has been sadly lost.

Middleton
The old name for the estate is Middleton Hall after a family who lived there in C15th-ish, that's why the NBGW is sometimes referred to as Middleton and why Middleton still appears on some maps.  I know almost nothing about the Middleton family however.  Only that their 'Hall' was positioned in the centre of the estate where there is now a field.  It is possible to just about make out the scars of the old road, bridleways and foundations of some of their buildings, but only if you really know what you're looking for and much of it is speculation anyway.  There are two small hillocks which it is thought marks the position of two formal fish ponds they are said to have had.  Otherwise, all is gone. 

The original estate was about 600acres and included a place called Middleton Cottage (a huge house) which now sits outside the NBGW and is privately owned.  Consequently, I've only seen old pictures of it.

Most of what interests us now about the estate dates back to Sir William Paxton (C18th) who was responsible for some of the buildings which still stand today.

William Paxton
Paxton's wealth is also a bit of a mystery.  He was the son of the clerk for an Edinburgh wine merchant and was very much a self-made man.  It is said that he worked as a cabin boy travelling to and from India on the trade ships.  It is also said that in this capacity he became good friends with Lord Nelson.  He certainly advertised himself as having had such a friendship in later life although many wonder if Nelson himself was aware of the friendship.

It seems Paxton made quite a bit of money over in India.  Apparently trading silk and the like.  Many of us here in horti wonder if there mightn't have been a few opium plants to blame for his wealth too.  Suffice to say, he brought his money back to the UK, set himself up as loan-shark extraordinaire to all his mates and promptly became something like the 6th richest man in Britain. 

Paxton then decided he needed to display his wealth.  He bought the Middleton estate and set about designing and building what was to become a very impressive water-park, productive gardens big enough to feed around 30 people throughout the year, mansion, servants house and stables amongst other things.

I'll go into them later.

[Maggi Young]

How about I do a sort of journal of a bit of the garden at a time, when I have time...

This is a terrific idea, Kristina, and one we welcome   

[apothecary]

Paxton's Estate
When Paxton bought the Middleton estate he had all-new building and landscaping done.  The Mansion he had built no longer exists although, what little I know of it, it was huge and pretentious.  For those of you who have visited the NBGW before I can describe it as having sat on the top of the viewing mound (where a scaled-down version of the foundations is now marked) overlooking the entire valley.  It was much larger than the viewing mound though and went back as far as where the Great Glasshouse stands today.

Old water-colours from a private collection show an avenue of what might be poplars framing the view of the valley from the mansion on one side, whilst records suggest that a series of formal parterres fanned out from the mansion and down the hill on the other side towards the NBGW entrance.

On the left of the mansion was the servants quarters and it still stands today.  It's the yellow building (Principality House) on the hill that you can see in pics earlier in this thread and it now houses the education department and a number of conference rooms.  I think the servants house goes to show the kind of money Paxton had.  No attic dorms for his staff!

Outside Principality House, on the opposite side to where the mansion stood, is a small walled garden called the Wallace Garden.  This was the original laundry yard, but today it's our genetics garden.

If we continue to walk down from the Wallace Gdn we come to the Stable Block.  This is where we house our restaurant, shop, offices etc. but it was once a huge stables with courtyard in the middle.  Apparently Paxton was a real horse enthusiast and it's said that the mansion, servants quarters and stables were all lined up in this way so that he could ask for all the doors in each building to be thrown wide open and then be able to see what the horses were up to from the comfort of his mansion.  In reality, I'm not convinced that this would have been possible.  The distance seems too great and the angle of the hill would interfere.

There are a few other old buildings on site: a collection of farms which we hope to develop one day and the 'Plants for Health' barn (Physicians of Myddfai).  This barn seems to be a slightly later addition and we don't know much about it.

The other main architectural feature is the Double Walled Garden.

Double Walled Garden
There are a variety of theories as to why we have a double-walled garden here since it is believed to be the only one outside Ireland and the borders to Scotland.  It is thought that Paxton may have taken the idea from Scotland since he came from Edinburgh, but we're not quite sure how it came about.  The inner wall is built of brick and is both taller and earlier.  We believe that Paxton had this built initially as a single walled garden to produce food for the estate.  The second wall is stone and it's a fair bit shorter.  It follows the inner wall closely on three sides and then extends itself to include the area outside the fourth side where the orchard would originally have been.  This has led to suggestions that it was built to keep out thieves, but then, why so much shorter? 

Another theory (our favourite) is that with two walls, the spaces between the walls (slip gardens) become a microclimate.  With one wall of brick (heats up fast) and one of stone (retains the heat for longer) it's possible to extend the growing season and bring on soft fruit in a way that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.  We know that other places have embraced this theory and although we like it best, we think there's probably more of a shoddy DIY answer to the whole thing. 

Our final theory is that a mistake was made and the original single-walled garden was poorly located.  There's a hill behind one of the walls which we believe they might have thought would protect the crops from our harsh winds.  In fact, it provides a truly stunning frost pocket all down two sides of our walled garden in winter (ironically it's worst just over the bed where we grow half-hardy bananas).  In summer the double-walled garden is one degree warmer than the rest of the garden and in winter it can be two degrees colder.  We think they built the second wall to try and remedy this problem, but we'll never know how much it helped.

Finally, the walled garden also included two glasshouses and a small bothy down the back.  Where we now have our new tropical house, the whitewashing on the original wall showed us that there was once before a glasshouse, probably a productive one for the gardener to propagate in.  We have no idea what it looked like.  On the same wall and to the right there are three open arches in the brick.  These mark the position of what we call the Peach House (referred to as such in old deeds) and we think this was more of a display house for the Paxton family to use as a conservatory since making arches in the insulating wall is hardly conducive to  high yield.  This part of the wall was never restored when the NBGW was built because the intricacies of it require far more thought and we have yet to decide what to do with it.  A series of flues run through the brick and over the arches and the big hole in the ground next to the arches shows us the remains of an old underfloor heating system.  We believe it may have been upgraded several times, initially heating by manure and eventually by coal.

Behind the Peach House in an area still not open to visitors sits the remains of a small stone bothy.  It has been suggested that this was the head gardeners house (too small to live in) or a place to sleep for whoever was responsible for stoking the Peach House boiler (too posh - pretty Gothic arch over the window).  Again, we believe this was part of the family quarters, a place to sit away from the workers.

As I mentioned, there was also an orchard outside the double walled garden.  Almost all of it is gone now, but one pear tree remains.  This sits exactly where part of the original inner wall should be and for some reason the pear was deemed important enough that the wall around it shouldn't be properly restored.  The pear produces tiny, bullet shaped fruit that taste like unripe tomatoes.  Either this species was for making perry or it is a seeded reversion and not worth keeping as far as the gardeners are concerned.  The hole in the wall made for it serves only to let all the rabbits in to eat the veg.

[apothecary]

On to the rest of the original estate.

At some point Paxton employed Samuel Lapidge (understudy to Capability Brown) to help landscape the estate and it may well be that Lapidge was instrumental in the building of the double-walled garden.  His primary feat here however was the construction of the lakes.

The estate was originally circled through 180degrees by a chain of 6 or 7 artificially constructed lakes.  As you come in through the modern-day Gatehouse (entrance) you will find an area of marshy field on your left and a small lake on your right.  The marshy field is where the first lake would likely have been (as evidenced by the entrance to the old ice-house visible in the hill on the far side).  At the moment we have only restored three of the lakes and so the one on the right of the Gatehouse marks the first today.  This is followed by the other two lakes and they make up one side of the cultivated gardens area.  Beyond these sits the estate's farm.

Originally another two or three lakes would have continued from the last one of ours and stretched as far as the very end point of the estate - a place called 'Pont Felin Gat' where the public road outside the garden crosses a small stone bridge.  This network of lakes were the basis of Paxtons 'waterpark' and old paintings show that there were once flower gardens, gazebos and boating houses down in Pont Felin Gat.  At the moment this area isn't open to visitors for health and safety reasons, but it is possible to visit from outside the gardens (many locals walk their dogs there) and remnants of the old waterpark can still be seen (including bricked channels, steps, bridges a small monkeys head set into an old fountain and a waterfall).  Besides a few clues as to it's history, Pont Felin Gat has been almost entirely re-claimed by nature and a forest of trees now grow where it is just possible to make out the margins of the old lakes.

The reason for the state of the lakes is that, during the war, enemy planes would apparently use the reflection from the lakes to navigate.  Consequently, they were all intentionally filled in.

There is another interesting feature relating to water.  Paxton was revolutionary in his thinking about clean water.  Apparently he was very much involved in the installation of many of the mains water and sewage channels of London to help improve public hygiene. Likewise, he ensured clean water was available on his estate in all areas.  When archaeologists studied the remains of the double-walled garden, they found very little of interest because the area had been used for nothing but grazing cattle for 40 years.  They could find no evidence of the original path layout or any clues as to what was grown.  The only find was the remains of the old dipping pond in the centre which would have been used to water the plants.  This pond was spring fed and when they traced the clay pipes back to the source, they found Paxton's Well (as it's now called) half way up a hill on the other side of the chain of lakes.  Another set of pipes took water from the same source all the way to the main house.  It seems Paxton actually had Lapidge lay the pipes for the water system before installing the lakes on top.  I dread to think what would have happened if they had sprung a leak under there.

[Martin Baxendale]

This is turning into a really good read, Kristina.

[Brian Ellis]

Kristina, this is a most interesting thread, thank you so much for taking the time and trouble to share this with us.

[SueG]

Hi Kristina
just like to add my thanks to you for taking the time to pass on all this information. I like the sound of the double walled garden. One of my friends is studying walled gardens and I hope to see her tonight. she may now something about why they were built, if so I'll pass it on.
Sue

[apothecary]

A bit more about Paxton:

Details are wishy-washy, and we keep hearing contradictions, but here are some interesting anecdotes.

At his prime, Paxton ran in the local elections and promised, if he won, to build a bridge over the river Towy.  He invested a huge amount of money in his campaign and included the purchase of a few thousand hot dinners and a good deal of beer to win some favour.  Amazingly, he didn't win and it was soon after this that he had Paxton's Tower (also known as Nelson's Tower) built nearby.

Paxton's Tower is a smallish three sided, 3 floored banqueting house which sits prominently at the top of the tallest hill of the old estate.  Paxton used it to entertain guests and also had a secret (trapdoor access only) top floor which he used as something like a big-boys playroom.

There are mixed theories about his reason for building Paxton's Tower.  One is that, with rumours of this insolvency after failing the elections, he decided to display the extent of his wealth in a way which couldn't be ignored for miles around, and which didn't involve building the promised bridge for the local community.

Another is that it was to commemorate his "good friend" Lord Nelson after his death.  This theory is supported by the stained glass window depicting Nelson which once belonged in the top floor of the tower , but which can now be seen at Carmarthen Museum.

Whatever the reason, A restored Paxton's tower (was hit by lightening some years ago) still stands today and the views from the 1st floor across the valley are magnificent.  It is now a free-to-enter National Trust (I think) property.

Paxton's estate is said to have been able to produce enough food to feed 30 people throughout the year.  It also grew some pretty exotic crops.  There are stories about a pineapple once grown on the estate which was rented out (as was common then) for £200 as a party display piece.  At some point on its journey, probably to London, it was stolen and all sorts of commotion ensued.

Principality house, the old servants quarters, is believed to be haunted by many at the gardens today.  Several members of the cleaning staff have left because they didn't like to clean the building on their own.  It has to be said that the electrics in the building do get up to some pretty incredible things.  If anyone's interested, the accounts of these experiences might be the subject of another thread - being a skeptic myself, I shant include it unless it's considered worthwhile info.

There are other ghost related stories about the site too.  It is said that Paxton once had a child when he was in India.  This child died in India, was embalmed and shipped back to him for the funeral.  The stories say he opened the coffin, took one look at the baby and announced it wasn't his before throwing it into one of the lakes.  The reason for his doubt is apparently because it's skin was all blackened.  It is thought that this may be either because it was half Indian or because the embalming process went wrong.  Either way, he is thought to have felt remorse some years later and so built a small black marble bridge across one of the lakes in memory of the baby.  No evidence of this bridge has been found to date, but the ghost of the blackened baby is said to remain near the lakes.

Until next time...

[apothecary]

Glad this thread proves interesting. I think it's about time though that I moved on to the present day.  To start off, I'll attach our site map because I'm finding orientation through text unnecessarily complicated.

[Martin Baxendale]

I wonder how much can be seen of the NBGW on Google Earth? Must go and have a look. Probably not much, as it's so rural.

[Anthony Darby]

This is excellent. You must be like a child in a sweet shop Kristina.

[apothecary]

And now to go through the numbers in order:

1. The Gatehouse.  This is where you, the visitor, have the opportunity to subsidise my income.  For this reason I'm obviously quite fond of it although it was always intended to be a semi temporary building and could do with a facelift.

2. The Broadwalk.  This is the spine of the site and takes the visitor from the Gatehouse all the way up to the top and past all the core features of the garden.  It is lined on one or both sides by what was once the longest herbaceous border in the world although I think we've lost that title now.  The orginal planting theme was based on colour and the length of the broadwalk was intended to walk the visitor through the entire spectrum.  Over the years this has been compromised a little in favour of a few good contrasts and of course there were always few anomalous beds here and there.  My favourite section is the bed half-way up the broadwalk which sits underneath a large copper beech.  It's a true spring/woodland bed, all in delightful pale greens with the odd touch of colour.  The whole patch is swathed in Galium odoratum with a variety of ferns and hellebores coming through.  There's also a good number of Galanthus nivalis/G. nivalis 'Flore Pleno' in this area.  At it's peak on a sunny day, the smell of springtime chlorophyll in this area is gorgeous.  The broadwalk is one of the few area of the garden dedicated to the display of ornamental plants without all the horrible scientific strings attached that we botanical gardeners are so fond of.  It's very popular with our general visitor.

3, 4 & 5.  The lakes.  I've already told you about the history of these and there isn't that much more to say.  Only that these are the 3 which have been restored for the time being and, being left relatively untouched, they are an absolute haven for wildlife.  We have our resident heron, Eric, who likes to observe the life of the garden from an ageing tree near the second lake and a variety of other birds including a number of kingfisher sightings.  I'm useless at birds so can't really tell you of anything more interesting than that.  Some have also seen otters down on the 2nd or 3rd lake at times and on the far side live deer (except when they wander over to our side for breakfast in the Walled Garden) and muntjac.  Someone once claimed to have seen a large puma-like black cat stalking the far side of the lake too.