….. Nant y Bedd Garden!

Yes, it’s true, we have won the RHS Partner Garden of the Year 2022.

We heard about it a couple of weeks ago but weren’t allowed to tell anyone until today. We were on a short family holiday – Sue has a ‘significant’ birthday later in the month – when we got an email asking us to phone Helen, the Partner Gardens Manager at RHS Wisley. Jokingly, Sue said “maybe we’ve won the Partner Gardens thing!”. We phoned Helen and we had!

There are just over 200 RHS Partner Gardens in the UK and overseas, yet our wonderful visitors and followers voted for us as their favourite. Thank you!

The theme this year was the “Feel-good Factor” and we’ve always thought that Nant y Bedd has that in abundance, a feeling backed up by literally hundreds of comments in our Visitors Book. To have those comments transferred to something as tangible as this award is amazing. Here’s one which sums it up:

“I arrived with many ‘things’ on my mind. I left at peace with my world thanks to yours”

This award is a just reward for all the care and vision that Sue has put into Nant y Bedd over the past 42 years, for sticking to her principles and being ahead of the current trend for re-wilding, allowing flowers, vegetables, trees and – yes – weeds to all intermingle to create what has often been described as a paradise for humans and wildlife.

Tomorrow morning we’ll be presented with the trophy and will post pictures of that and a bit more info over the next few days.

For 2023 we again have a tremendous series of workshops and events, old favourites like Foraging and Cyanotype printing and Making Garden Structures, and new ones including a Creative Writing day with the wonderful Alys Fowler. Plus, of course, the ever popular Compost Making and Wild Gardening days led by Sue. Full details will be published very soon in our November Newsletter, so sign up by dropping us an e-mail to garden@nantybedd.com

Next year’s opening times will be a bit different and will be all pre-booking. We will start on the 1st June until the end of September and be available for booking on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday only. – we’ve go to have some days to do our work in the garden!. We have also changed the opening times on those days to opening at 11.00 and closing at 5.00pm (last entry at 4.00pm) – we might be able to fit in a late afternoon swim then.