Here is the classic flower garden of an ancestral family home. This 80 acre garden planted by the Aberconway family falls broadly into two parts, a formal terrace garden and The Dell, a spring woodland garden. It has abundant running water and a background of large native trees, many of them planted about 1792.

The fall of the land has been a great natural advantage, and has been used with striking effect. Stand on the top terrace in front of the house, which is not open to the public, and an unforgettable backdrop of the distant Snowdonia Range is framed on either side by a cedar of Lebanon and a blue cedar. Between these stretches a large elegant stone edged lily pond. Descending from the top terrace, four more Italianate terraces constructed by the second Lord Aberconway between 1904 and 1914, end in a huge rectangular canal overlooked from one end by the Pin Mill.

The Pin Mill was originally constructed about 1730 at Woodchester in Gloucestershire. Later it was used as a mill for the manufacture of pins, and later still as a tannery. In 1938 it was decaying in squalid surroundings. The late Lord Aberconway accordingly bought it, and removed to Bodnant the roof, the timbers, and all the carved and dressed stonework. He incorporated these in a new building, brick based and, like the original, stucco-covered.

The summer show on the terraces captivates, with planting of magnolias and other flowering shrubs against lichen-covered stone walls and with water lilies playing host to dancing dragonflies. The Dell is an area formed by the valley of the River Hiraethlyn, a tributary of the Conwy, and contains the Pinetum and Wild Garden. In the pinetum are several Sequoiadendron giganteum ('Wellingtonia'), and specimens of Sequoia sempervirens ('Redwood'), Tsuga heterophylla ('Western Hemlock'), Tsuga mertensiana, Pseudotsuga menziesii ('Douglas Fir'), Metasequoia glyptostroboides, Abies nordmanniana, Abies cephalonica, as well as several cedars.

In May the whole area is dotted with colour when the wonderful collection of rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias and woodland spring flowers come into bloom. The garden contains its own famous rhododendron hybrids, a laburnum arch, borders of perennials and many roses. www.sisley.co.uk

Written by  Tony Sissons.

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