Powis Castle.

          I'm still very much a boy at heart, and I don't think I'm alone in saying that a good castle sets my pulse racing. What constitutes a "good" castle? Well, a good castle and castle garden should have fresh excitement awaiting on every level, from bottom to top.
Constructed in an ancient Welsh kingdom and embellished with every passing century, Powis Castle is a very good castle indeed - and its garden of many tiers revealed countless reasons for excitement on a grey September afternoon.

          Unless you are a medieval warrior assaulting the ramparts, a visit to the castle garden starts at the top.
Walking beneath wisteria-festooned gateways and between wandering peacocks (no less), you come into a central courtyard with a long stone balustrade along its eastern side. Its height has been cannily calculated - short in appearance, but just managing to screen the view beyond, compelling you to walk across and lean over it like a ship's rail.
It works beautifully - not only does the Severn Valley lie before you, but so too does a second teaser, as glimpses of the gardens below can be seen behind yew trees and hedge-lines.

                Once you have descended past the courtyard, these yews are as much a part of the castle's structure, majesty and eccentricity as the stonework - some sitting like giant bearskin hats, and others forming entire walls. One hedge is a truly colossal fourteen metres in height, and some yews date back to the 1680s which makes them older than some countries. Initially abstract in shape, the hedges straighten further down the garden (some are yew, others are crisp box hedges), and the va va voom factor moves from the hedges into what the hedges are containing: herbaceous borders.

                I'm not familiar with the climate of the Severn Valley, but clearly some magic occurs here. With the summer seemingly behind us, the gardeners here had clearly kept it a secret from the dahlias, pelargoniums, rudbeckias and ricinus plants which all stood as tall and bright as though it were a sunny day in late June - looking all the prouder for not caring that it wasn't. Whatever the trick is, it has seemingly been steadily honed over a great length of time: old photographs placed at particularly scenic points in the garden show moustached gardeners stood before the very same flowerbeds, virtually identical in appearance.
                As the garden finally descends to its lowest point the pathways are replaced by wide lawns, and the plants of these borders tumble across them - traditional, romantic choices such as hollyhocks and Japanese anemones in pinks and pale yellows. To reach these pretty squares, however, one must pass through one of the most enjoyable parts of the garden. The moustached gardeners clearly had flair for fruit-growing, creating two avenues of apple and pear trees. Their rounded forms would be charming enough, with every lichen-encrusted branch curling at its tip and revealing decades of loving pruning. However each tree is also underplanted with circles of herbs which adds further interest, splashes of colour right along the path and something marvellous which I have never seen before.

                A gentle fountain marks the end of the formal horticulture, but not the end of the garden. Ascending from the lawns into wilder banks of mature trees and shrubs, and the season's first sprays of cyclamen flowers, the pathway finishes upon a large pond. Walking along this winding stretch, the view of the castle and its many terraces (another visitor has titled it Wales' very own Hanging Gardens) naturally draws the eyes back westwards. It is, then, all too easy to pass by the quiet corner on the other side of the path which holds my favourite part of the garden: the plunge pool.

                A small sign adjacent to the pool explains that eighteenth century thinking upheld bathing as beneficial to one's health, and a bath placed out in the fresh air with beautiful views as beneficial to one's soul. Stood in the shade of the rhododendrons and charmed by the old stonework covered in moss and hart's tongue ferns, I felt it unnecessary of the sign's writer to limit the description of an obvious truth to a mere philosophy (and an apparently dated one at that)!
                Baths are one of my deepest pleasures, and the regularity with which I can be found in one has caused plentiful amusement amongst my friends. They shall certainly be my secret weapon against back and knee weariness as I continue gardening. I cannot enthuse strongly enough how much I desire to replicate this beautiful pool in my own garden one day. It marks the last in a fabulous array of wonders found at Powis Castle, a bastion of colour and vitality against the grey September skies. It does, quite naturally, raise the question as to what else can be found here in spring and summer!
I very much intend to return and to find the answer.