The Dell in autumn, Bodnant Garden.

                Anyone who has set foot into Bodnant Garden knows that it’s a very special place. You don’t need to have a blog on horticulture or fluency in botanical Latin, anyone I’ve met who has been there knows it. It is spectacularly beautiful, and I shall always count myself blessed for having had the chance to pop along as a volunteer gardener three years ago, when I first got started. Bodnant was the first experience I wrote about on the blog, in December 2013, and I was there every week until the RHS invited me down to Essex the following summer. I hold the garden in the highest esteem, and I have been there through winter, spring, and summer - yet for all the drifts of daffodils I have seen, the azaleas in flower and the laburnum arch dripping with yellow, it is only now that I have been there in autumn.

                There is no need for me to point out how lovely it looked - it is the most romantic garden in the United Kingdom, with a further brush of autumnal colour of course it looked wonderful (and the mild weather has even kept Bodnant’s roses lingering on). To add to the enjoyment, I wasn’t alone but with my mother, sister Charis, and Michelle who was visiting Bodnant for the first time. The only slightly regret I had was in bringing a cameraphone with no battery - the garden’s loveliness would go appreciated, absolutely, but not photographed. However, perhaps noticing that for once I wasn’t annoyingly dashing about or getting myself lost for the sake of a few photos, Charis kindly offered me her cameraphone instead. Looking back at the photos now (at the subject, rather than my skills as a photographer!), I'm so glad she did. Hopefully I can use them to persuade my friends to visit the garden!

Much of Bodnant's fame rests in its evergreens - the mighty redwoods and rhododendrons - but it's wonderful to see hitherto green-camouflaged acers deepening into reds and purples.

Although some sort of enchantment appears to lie on this land,
protecting the leaves from falling, cyclamen are a true sign of the
shortening days. In the image below, it is barely possible to see
white-flowered cyclamen at the base of the Sequoiadendron giganteum -
a hint of its vast scale.

Michelle pondering to herself whether Bodnant would host a wedding reception!

Pinus strobus ‘Minima’ aglow in the warmth of a setting sun.

The greens, yellows and pinks upon a Deutzia scabra ‘Candidissima’ slowly recalling that it is decidious after all.

One of Bodnant’s countless pretty streams, babbling toward the Pin Mill.