Great Glasshouse ..

.. at the National Botanic Garden of Wales. 

Yes Wales, quite a long way really though we have gone just over the Severn Bridge before to Chepstow and the Wye Valley and even the Brecon Beacons but all we had to do was get on the M4 (our usual route home) about 8 miles from here and stay on it until it ends just short of Carmarthen.
This is somewhere Chris has wanted to go specifically to see this relatively recent Great Glasshouse.
The gardens are on the estate of the previous Middleton Hall which burned down in the early ‘30s. There is a lovely double walled garden and hothouse and an ornamental lake within extensive parkland and woods with plenty of walks.

The key attraction though was this huge domed glasshouse designed by Norman Foster in the late ‘90s and opened at the turn of the 21st century.

You can see the plan in this shot with paths leading through zones representing and displaying plants from counties with a hot Mediterranean type of climate and looking to future possible planting here.
You can see the dome from the outside inset photo.

It was sunny from the start today but we had a sharp shower when we entered the glasshouse, the sun was back when we came out and it seemed to be suddenly much hotter and quite sticky.

We took a refreshing walk through the Fairy Woods, past the restored lake to a waterfall. There was a fun ‘Y Gryfallo’ trail for youngsters and I saw several different butterflies and dragonflies though the latter weren’t for being photographed!

We’ve enjoyed a good four hours there this afternoon with lunch, a cup of tea and a Welsh cake so it was worth the journey.