The Arboretum
Enter the Park from any of its four entrances and you can’t fail to notice our outstanding trees, many of which have been quietly growing here for hundreds of years.
But it is not just our designated semi-natural ancient woodland that boasts the site’s oldest, most beautiful individuals. The Arboretum, immediately south and east of the museum, is where you’ll find our more exotic specimen plantings, all given enough space to reach their greatest potential.
Bishop Jenkinson, after whom the new Jenkinson Garden is named, would have inherited some of these trees from his predecessors, and particularly Bishop Lord George Murray who we believe to be responsible for a number of plantings across the site between 1801 and 1803. These include the three holm oaks, one of which guards the entrance to the Walled Garden, another of which sweeps languidly over the Bishop’s Pond from the Ha-ha, brushing its water when water levels are high.
Some, however, pre-date even Murray; our two box trees, one of the slowest growing British natives, must have been planted as topiary in the 18th Century – a lesson in what will happen if you don’t keep them clipped! The magisterial Cedar of Lebanon too is most likely a late-18th Century planting, and possibly a collection of trees ‘clumped’ together to form a single crown, and which have long since fused.
Still others clearly show us how much at the forefront of horticultural introduction and innovation the bishops were.
Our three London planes – one of which stands proudly as the centrepiece of the formal lawn – may well be amongst the earliest plantings of this hybrid species in Wales, more than 150 years ago.
By contrast the dawn redwoods, one of which is the Carmarthenshire record holder for height at 27m, were only known from the fossil record until being discovered in China in the 1940s. Ours may well have been planted in the 1960s, by one of the last bishops to reside in the Old Palace.
But it is not just history that we are managing and celebrating at the Park. New plantings are being undertaken where space allows, both to ensure successors to our most iconic trees (such as the monkey puzzle, endangered in the wild), and to carefully introduce new species that fit most appropriately with our restoration and ecology.
So, spend some time getting to know these incredible windows onto the past and the future, in the peace and serenity of our beautiful arboretum.
The Arboretum
But it is not just our designated semi-natural ancient woodland that boasts the site’s oldest, most beautiful individuals. The Arboretum, immediately south and east of the museum, is where you’ll find our more exotic specimen plantings, all given enough space to reach their greatest potential.
Bishop Jenkinson, after whom the new Jenkinson Garden is named, would have inherited some of these trees from his predecessors, and particularly Bishop Lord George Murray who we believe to be responsible for a number of plantings across the site between 1801 and 1803. These include the three holm oaks, one of which guards the entrance to the Walled Garden, another of which sweeps languidly over the Bishop’s Pond from the Ha-ha, brushing its water when water levels are high.
Some, however, pre-date even Murray; our two box trees, one of the slowest growing British natives, must have been planted as topiary in the 18th Century – a lesson in what will happen if you don’t keep them clipped! The magisterial Cedar of Lebanon too is most likely a late-18th Century planting, and possibly a collection of trees ‘clumped’ together to form a single crown, and which have long since fused.
Still others clearly show us how much at the forefront of horticultural introduction and innovation the bishops were.
By contrast the dawn redwoods, one of which is the Carmarthenshire record holder for height at 27m, were only known from the fossil record until being discovered in China in the 1940s. Ours may well have been planted in the 1960s, by one of the last bishops to reside in the Old Palace.
But it is not just history that we are managing and celebrating at the Park. New plantings are being undertaken where space allows, both to ensure successors to our most iconic trees (such as the monkey puzzle, endangered in the wild), and to carefully introduce new species that fit most appropriately with our restoration and ecology.
So, spend some time getting to know these incredible windows onto the past and the future, in the peace and serenity of our beautiful arboretum.