History of Bodnant Garden

Early to mid 1800s

Henry Davis Pochin

When Victorian industrialist Henry Davis Pochin and his wife bought Bodnant at auction in 1874 it was an estate with walled garden, woods and plantations; it was Pochin's grand vision which shaped the garden into the world renowned one which we know today. 

The Laburnum Arch 

Pochin enlisted the skills of landscape designer Edward Milner to develop the formal Victorian shrub garden around the house, including the famous Laburnum Arch. He also sculpted the sloping valley sides down to the river, planting North American conifers and creating pathways to form the romantic dells and water gardens. 

As a local landowner Pochin was no less active, building cottages on the Bodnant estate and improving farming practices.  

Late 1800s to early 1900s

The McLarens

The transformation continued under Pochin's daughter Laura (who married Charles McLaren, later 1st Lord Aberconway, in 1877) who developed the wild garden in the Far End at the turn of the century. Laura was a lover of herbaceous plants and developed the upper formal gardens in the newly emerging Edwardian style, with billowing flower borders. 

Hybrid rhododendrons

Henry (later 2nd Lord Aberconway) sponsored the expeditions of plant collectors such as Ernest Wilson and George Forrest, who brought back to Bodnant Garden ‘exotic’ new Asian and South American plants, notably magnolias and rhododendrons. With his head gardener Frederick Puddle, Henry transformed the garden.  

They also worked closely together on the garden’s plant-breeding programme producing many hybrids, especially rhododendrons, from these new plant discoveries. Frederick's skill took Bodnant Garden to gold success at several RHS Chelsea Flower Shows and he was awarded the RHS Victoria Medal of Honour alongside his employer. 

1904 to 1938

Building Bodnant's five terraces

Bodnant Garden is famous for its five Italianate terraces, built between 1904 and 1914. They are a testament to the vision of the garden’s founder family and to the men who built them, some of whom went away to fight in the First World War and did not return. 

The terraces were designed by Henry Duncan McLaren and his mother Laura, Lady Aberconway, a gifted horticulturalist. Lady Aberconway was also an active campaigner for the women’s suffrage movement, and she handed the management of the garden to her son Henry on his coming of age, to focus on her political life in London.  

Influenced by the Arts and Crafts design movement, they used local materials and traditional craftsmanship to create garden rooms with wide flower-filled borders linked by stone terraces, paths and steps and wooden arbours, with classical statues and furniture for an Italian flourish. It was a massive project, carving out five levels of the hillside.  

Finishing touches 

The outbreak of war halted work in 1914, and many finishing touches and adornments were added to the terraces by Henry in later years. In 1938 he added the Pin Mill, a crumbling Georgian building saved from dereliction in Gloucestershire and moved to Bodnant Garden.  

Mid 1900s onwards

Gifting the garden to the National Trust

Henry was president of the Royal Horticultural Society from 1931 until his death. In 1948 he persuaded the National Trust to accept gardens on their own merit into the fold of the charity – Bodnant being the second admitted, in 1949, after Hidcote.  

When Henry died in 1953 his son Charles inherited the title of 3rd Lord Aberconway and the care of Bodnant estate and garden. He continued to develop Bodnant Garden with the Trust, making improvements, opening new vistas and adding new plants. 

Into the 21st century

Charles’s son Michael McLaren inherited the estate in 2003 and remains keenly involved to this day. As garden director he maintains the family’s historic and creative links to Bodnant in a new era of 21st-century developments, which have brought the opening of private areas such as the Winter Garden, Old Park, Yew Dell, Far End and Furnace.