A rich heritage...

The RHS Show Cardiff has been held in the parklands of Cardiff Castle since 2005 and last year attracted record crowds...

The RHS Show Cardiff has been held in the parklands of Cardiff Castle since 2005, and last year attracted record crowds with more than 20,500 visitors from across the UK. The setting is particularly appropriate for the first outdoor show of the RHS season, as the parklands are hugely significant in horticultural heritage terms.

Once the gardens of the world’s richest man, the First Marquess of Bute commissioned Capability Brown to work on the Castle Green in the late 18th century, but it was 100 years before the gardens were extended beyond the Castle walls by the Third Marquess of Bute, who made his fortune by transforming Cardiff into the world’s largest coal exporting port.

With his wealth, the Marquess commissioned the architect William Burgess to design the reconstruction of the Castle in the heart of the city, and cultivated the land around his home, bringing exotic plants and trees from around the world to symbolise his status as a grand figure in Victorian society.

In the second half of the 19th century, the Marquess brought his head gardener Andrew Pettigrew from his Isle of Bute estate to look after the gardens, and Pettigrew travelled extensively to source the interesting mix of rare and ornamental trees.

Andrew Pettigrew produced wine from local grapes that was unique to Victorian Britain, and turned the private gardens of the Bute estate from grand venues for Victorian society gatherings, to public spaces to be enjoyed by the people of Cardiff. He researched the vineyards around Paris and in Champagne country, and met the managers at Chateaux Lafite, Latour and the Margaux.

Pettigrew tried his hand at wine-making with the ‘Royal Muscatine’ grapes that had been growing for years on the south wall of Cardiff Castle. A wine press is on display in Cardiff castle, and 12 vast oak barrels that once housed Welsh wine survive to this day.

Pettigrew was also a specialist in the cultivation of fruit, laying out avenues of apple and pear trees, and growing melons, peaches, grapes and pineapples in the gardens’ glasshouses nearby. The Butes spent only a few weeks a year in Cardiff, and so fruit and vegetables would be packaged up and dispatched by train to London or Scotland to supply the family with their own produce.

Andrew Pettigrew died in 1903, and his obituary in the Gardeners Magazine acknowledged his contribution as: “on a most uncompromising site Mr Pettigrew formed a pleasance of great beauty…its creation was a triumph of the landscapist’s art.”

Andrew Pettigrew, a Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society, started a horticultural dynasty, with his son William becoming Head Gardner to Cardiff Corporation, and later enjoying a similar role in Manchester before being replaced by his younger Andrew Alexander. William wrote the first major handbook on the management of public parks. Their brother Hugh was also a noted gardener and after serving his apprenticeship at Cardiff Castle went on to work at Kew.

Today, the parklands are acknowledged as one of the finest urban parks in the UK for trees, featuring 48 Champion Trees - the tallest or broadest and likely to be the oldest of their kind in the UK.

The site is one of the most popular features of the Welsh capital, which has achieved Gold Medal status in the Europe-wide Entente Florale competition.