National Botanic Garden of Wales
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The National Botanic Garden of Wales (NBGW) is situated near Llanarthney in the Towy Valley, Carmarthenshire, West Wales. It is both a visitor attraction and a centre for botanical research and conservation.
NBGW seeks "to develop a viable world-class national botanic garden dedicated to the research and conservation of biodiversity and its sustainable utilisation, to lifelong learning and to the enjoyment of the visitor."
NBGW is a Registered Charity, and as a Charitable organization is reliant upon funding from visitors, friends, grants and gifts. It has no regular government funding support. Significant startup costs were shared with the UK Millennium Fund.
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[edit] History of the Site
The Middleton family from Oswestry built a mansion here in the early 1600s. In 1789 William Paxton bought the estate for £40,000 to create a water park. He used his great wealth to employ some of the finest creative minds of his day, including the eminent architect Samuel Pepys Cockerell, who he commissioned to design and build a new Middleton Hall, turning the original one into a farm. The new Middleton Hall became ‘one of the most splendid mansions in South Wales’ which ‘far eclipsed the proudest of the Cambrian mansions in Asiatic pomp and splendour’.
Paxton created an ingenious water park. Water flowed around the estate via a system of interconnecting lakes, ponds and streams linked by a network of dams, water sluices, bridges and cascades. Spring water was stored in elevated reservoirs that fed into a lead cistern on the mansion’s roof, allowing Paxton’s residence to enjoy piped running water and the very latest luxury, water closets.
Middleton Estate was described in a 19th century sale catalogue as ‘richly ornamented by nature, and greatly improved by art’ but fell into decline in the early 20th century. The house burnt down in 1931.
[edit] History of the Garden
The idea for a National Botanic Garden of Wales originated from the Welsh artist, William Wilkins, whose aunt had described to him the ruins of an elaborate water features she had discovered while walking in the local woods at Pont Felin Gat.
The Garden was opened to the public for the first time on 24 May 2000, and was officially opened on 21 July by the Prince of Wales. The site extends to 568 acres.
21st Century approaches to recycling and conservation have been used in the design of the centre. Biomass recycling is used to provide heating for some of the facilities such as the visitor centre and glasshouses.
[edit] Botanical Collections
The Norman Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank designed Great Glasshouse is a large glass-domed structure that houses plants from several Mediterranean climate regions. The Great Glasshouse is said to be the world's largest single-span glasshouse. It is 95m long and 55m wide and is partially built below ground level. The roof contains 785 panes of glass. The plants are divided into sections from Chile, Western Australia, South Africa, California, the Canary Islands and the Mediterranean itself.
The Double Walled Garden has been rebuilt from the ruins, and is being developed to house a wide variety of plants, including a modern interpretation of a kitchen garden in one quarter, and ornamental beds to display the classification and evolution of all flowering plant families in the other three quarters. Near here a new Tropical Glasshouse, designed by Welsh architect John Belle, will be opened in July 2007 to continue the classification displays with tropical monocotyledons. All classification is in accordance with cutting edge research involving the genetic fingerprinting of plants in order to determine their evolutionary relationships to one another.
[edit] Paxton's Tower
On the hill overlooking the botanic gardens is Paxton's Tower. Built by Paxton after he unsuccessfully ran for parliament. He had promised the local residents a bridge over the river Towy if they elected him. However after rumours of his bankruptcy they did not elect him. The rumours were false so using the money he had set aside he built the tower which is officially dedicated to Lord Nelson
