Dyffryn Gardens & Arboretum

Dyffryn is the grandest Edwardian garden in Wales, and it is a great place to see the garden room idea at full scale. Thomas Mawson designed the gardens for the coal owner John Cory from 1894, and Cory's son Reginald, a keen plant collector, filled them with plants from around the world.

The gardens fall into three main areas. In the middle, Dyffryn House looks over the croquet lawn and the Great Lawn, which has a long canal and a bronze Chinese-style dragon fountain at its centre. At the southern end are the Vine Walk, a series of arches each with a different vine, and the Lavender Garden with its red brick folly. To the west are the Garden Rooms, a series of terraced themed gardens including an Italian Terrace, Australasian and Mediterranean Gardens, a physic garden, a rose garden, a reflecting pool and the Pompeian Garden, entered through an arch dated 1909. The east side is the arboretum, the largest section, leading from the kennel bank to the rockery. Statues of people with animals appear throughout, and the glasshouses now hold the bronze figures of Fujin and Raijin.

Gardeners will find plenty of ideas in the Garden Rooms, each a manageable size, and the arboretum includes trees from Reginald Cory's plant hunting, most famously the paperbark maple grown from Ernest Wilson's seed. There is a shop and tea room at the admissions building.