RHS Journals

The Garden
September 2001

Plas Brondanw

Portmeirion is famed internationally for its architecture and gardens, although the nearby private gardens of its creator, Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, are less known, but no less impressive, as Jenny Hendy discovered

The original mansion house of Plas Brondanw dated from 1550, but was restored in the 1950s following a fire. At the edge of the lawn is a long border beneath the old fruit trees containing a riot of pink Hydrangea serrata cultivars and hebes	Against the backdrop of green, the pockets of colour in the garden appear even more vivid. Here, scarlet-flowered Tropaeolum speciosum (flame creeper) scrambles up a topiary column

Each year almost a quarter of a million visitors flock to the famous Italianate fantasy village and gardens of Portmeirion, created between 1925 and 1976 by architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis on the North Wales coast. Yet only a tiny proportion of those visitors make the 8-km (5-mile) trip northeast to Sir Clough's home, Plas Brondanw.
The winding route from Portmeirion to the Plas is not obviously signposted, but it is worth persevering to experience one of the finest gardens inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement. At last, down a lane, the gates of Plas Brondanw appear, painted Portmeirion Green, the registered blue-green verdigris shade that is a hallmark of the village resort. On entering the cobbled stables courtyard the world outside seems to fade away. All that can be heard is the sound of running water from the 'fireboy' fountain, a curious sculpture of a child wearing a fireman's helmet and carrying a hosepipe, and the bleating of sheep in nearby fields.
The courtyard is enclosed by clipped-yew hedging punctuated by towering columns of Italian cypress. A narrow gap in these green walls is marked by a low panel of elegant ironwork; the view beyond takes the breath away. The ground falls steeply northwestward to the wide plain, rising again in the form of Moel Hebog, a mountain the bulk of which is accentuated by a single, tall, foreground pine.
Once the sea came right up to the base of the ridge on which the Plas is built but the cob embankment at Porthmadog, constructed in the early 19th century, effectively drained the Glaslyn estuary. Sir Clough felt that the ambitious reclamation 'gained quite a lot of poorish land but at the expense of the landscape and for my part, I wish they had left well alone'.
At the end of a drive up to the Plas from the estuary is a pair of gates on which Sir Clough originally intended to have featured two heraldic eagles, but he altered the design, replacing them with mermaids, 'in memory of the departed sea'. He also used the two-tailed mermaid motif throughout Portmeirion, where it emphasises the resort's cliffside location overlooking the sea, as well as reflecting his great love of sailing.

Romantic estate
Sir Clough was given Plas Brondanw in 1908, at the age of 25, by his father. The somewhat dilapidated house dated from around 1550. He said that his father, the Rev John Clough Williams-Ellis, 'believed that he was providing me with an anchor and something definite to work for. I was in the antiquarian phase, and the guardianship of a rambling old Carolean Plas, a Capital Mansions House‚ set in a wildly romantic little estate among the Welsh mountains that had been held by my family for over four centuries, was well calculated to inflame me.'
Sir Clough had already established an architectural practice in London, so he was not able to make Plas Brondanw his permanent home until 1939. However, the restoration and development of the Plas was to become his abiding passion.
His first additions to the property were made from 1911-12 and include the beautifully proportioned orangery that looks out across the former estuary, but work was curtailed by the outbreak of the First World War. Sir Clough volunteered for active duty with the Welsh Guards and it was not until 1920 that he began laying out the 0.8-ha (2-acre) garden in earnest.
He took full advantage of the sloping site, creating a series of garden rooms and terraces enclosed by hedges of yew, box and pleached lime. These were connected by flights of arching stone steps, their finely wrought handrails picked out in shades of Portmeirion Green and golden yellow.

Framed landscape
The garden's geometry was largely determined by the dramatic surrounding landscape. To the northeast is a pyramidal peak called the Cnicht; Sir Clough created two main axes, both of which align with the mountain, and at many points throughout the garden the peak has been artfully framed.
One of the most striking features of the garden is the cross axis that bisects the topiary allée, leading to a raised circular terrace known as the Apollo Belvedere. The statue of Apollo that was housed there was stolen many years ago. Scarlet-flowered Tropaeolum speciosum (flame creeper) scrambles up the topiary columns.
To the left the view is funnelled by high yew hedges that terminate with a wall containing three verdigris-coloured niches with a central figure flanked by two classical busts. Opposite, the arrangement is mirrored by a hedge with three arched apertures that line up with Moel Hebog. A continuous ribbon of Hosta sieboldiana fills the area with a blue-grey light through-out summer, especially on a dull day.
Although the formal layout, delicate ironwork and stone statuary evoke a classical atmosphere, this is tempered by the use of vernacular materials that link the garden with the ruggedly built four-storey house. Some of the slate came from a cutting down the lane which Sir Clough later landscaped and dubbed The Chasm. The local slate is different from the Blaenau Ffestiniog quarries a few miles away, cleaving unevenly to produce a softer effect for paving and walling.

Sheltered situation
At the edge of the property is a long border, probably the former boundary of a kitchen garden (and still containing old fruit trees). It is filled with sumptuous hydrangeas, mostly H. serrata cultivars, interspersed with yellow-flowered Spartium junceum (Spanish broom) and hebes. In the shade by the house grow billowing white-flowered Japanese anemones, purple aconites, astilbes, hostas and ferns. On the sunny side of the path, at the base of the 1m (39in) thick walls, are crocosmia, buddleja, cistus and Hypericum 'Hidcote'. Cordyline australis adds a flavour of the Riviera. Ferns and wild flowers colonise the cracks and crevices in the stonework; mosses and lichens abound.
Rhododendrons and azaleas also thrive with the high rainfall, making the garden equally beautiful in spring and early summer. Although Plas Brondanw does not enjoy as mild a climate as Portmeirion with its subtropical plantings, winter temperatures are still relatively high. Frosts are rare and, sheltered from the worst of the winds, vulnerable shrubs such as bay, fig, Griselinia and Cornus 'Norman Hadden' flourish.

Filling the gaps
Plas Brondanw was never meant to be a flower garden: Clough's botanist granddaughter Menna Angharad, who still has a studio at the Plas, remembers that her grandfather wished only for 'splashes of colour here and there'. Around four years ago Russell Sharp was appointed Gardens Manager of Portmeirion and Plas Brondanw; he made one of his first tasks a complete overhaul of the dilapidated nursery at Portmeirion, enabling commercial plant production. As a result a wide range of material became available and, working with Menna who designed the planting, some of the gaps that had appeared in the years since Sir Clough's death were filled. One exciting aspect of this partnership is that plants that Sir Clough had originally taken from his own garden to use at Portmeirion were able to be returned, a notable example being Hydrangea paniculata 'Grandiflora' trained as standards‚ which are such a feature in the village.

Shoestring project
For much of his long life Sir Clough had limited funds and both Plas Brondanw and Portmeirion were to a great extent built on a shoestring. Moreover, the outbreak of the Second World War put an end to most building work, effectively drying up income from the architectural practice. After the war, even in the early 1950s, building was still strictly controlled and though materials continued to be in short supply Sir Clough, who fortunately had an eye for architectural salvage, bought bargains from private sales and auctions and rescued many items from demolition.
He wrote, 'it was for Brondanw's sake that I worked and stinted, for its sake that I chiefly hoped to prosper. A cheque of ten pounds would come in and I would order yew hedging to that extent; a cheque for twenty and I would pave a further piece of terrace.'
Even when, on leave from the front in 1915, Sir Clough married Amabel Strachey, he was thinking of Plas Brondanw. When his commanding officer gave him a cheque as a regimental wedding present and suggested a commemorative silver salver, Sir Clough asked if it might be used to build a watch tower at Plas Brondanw instead. 'Sir, there happens to be a rocky eminence close above my home on which I have always felt there should be a tower of some sort - a superb viewpoint commanding wonderful panoramas from the summit of Snowdon to the sea,' he wrote.
In 1951 a blaze gutted Plas Brondanw, but despite many difficulties Sir Clough completed the restoration in just two years. A flaming urn monument can be found high above the chasm at the end of a long tree-lined avenue planted by himself and Amabel.
Sir Clough never ceased to plant trees and landscape Plas Brondanw. In 1971 he wrote, 'It is warming… to see the avenues that I planted growing so flourishingly and the whole place maturing in ever increasing beauty'. A man of great energy and romantic vision, he struggled for much of his career due to the austerity of the period. He seemed to compensate for this with his bold and imaginative use of colour. Portmeirion apart, little of his work has survived in its original form, but the garden of Plas Brondanw remains as a living legacy to Sir Clough Williams-Ellis' talent.

Sir Clough and Portmeirion
Bertram Clough Williams-Ellis was born in 1883. After attending Trinity College, Cambridge and the Architectural Association School, London, he set up an architectural practice based in London.
After years of searching by land and sea he decided that his own private Snowdonian peninsula was the perfect location for his dream project, the holiday village of Portmeirion which he began building in the Italian style in 1925 (see The fantasy grows, The Garden, May 1999, pp340-5).
It was his ambition to show that 'the development of a naturally beautiful site need not lead to its defilement and that architectural good manners could be good for business'. The resort opened in 1926; new structures were added each year until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, when Sir Clough closed down his London practice and moved permanently to Plas Brondanw.
A fire destroyed much of the house in December 1951 but its massive outer walls remained and the building was reconstructed over the following two years. Work recommenced at Portmeirion in 1954 and continued under Clough's direction until 1976 at which point he was 93.
Sir Clough received his knighthood in 1972: at that time the oldest knight ever created. He died at Plas Brondanw in 1978, little more than a month short of his 95th birthday.

Further information
Plas Brondanw, Llanfrothen, Panrhyndeudraeth LL48 6SW.
Tel: (01766) 772318.
Gardens are open 9am-5pm daily.
Admission: £1.50, children 25p

Jenny Hendy trained as a botanist and now writes about people, plants and gardens

Images: Derek St Romaine

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