Plas Brondanw Gardens & Café

Plas Brondanw was the private home of the Arts and Crafts architect Clough Williams Ellis and his wife, Amabel, between 1902 and 1978.

Surrounded by mountain peaks, Plas Brondanw is one of the best-kept secrets in North Wales. Although less well known than his village and gardens at Portmeirion, the Grade I listed gardens of Plas Brondanw are nevertheless considered by many to be Clough Williams-Ellis’s most important creation.

Sir Clough created a unique and distinctive garden landscape which provides a series of superb views and romantic prospects set within Snowdonia National Park. The gardens are laid out as a series of enclosed rooms, linked by axial views leading to distant peaks. Within the garden rooms, pieces of unusual art and sculptures are arranged, many are architectural salvage which Cough obtained through reclamation sales.

Inspired by the gardens of renaissance Italy, strong architectural influences are evident within the gardens; stone walls, topiary, pools, fountains and avenues of trees leading the eye to the dramatic borrowed landscape beyond the garden.

Other features include a woodland walk with several “eye-catchers” set at the end of beautiful avenues of trees, a spectacular cascade and pool built into a disused quarry. The walk concludes at a folly tower, built to honour Williams-Ellis's marriage in 1915, offering impressive 360° views of the surrounding mountains and sea.

Plas Brondanw is not a garden bursting with colourful flowers or lush herbaceous borders, it is a garden based on formal structure and designed views of the surrounding mountains. So, although there is more colour in the summer months, the feel of the garden does not change though the seasons. The imposing structure of the hedges, topiary and tree forms (we have a very impressive 200 years+ Quercus Ilex), architecture and the borrowed views of the surrounding landscape are the features that make this garden significant, the flowers are merely embellishments.

Plas Brondanw is also host to a charming café which is the ideal venue to taste local Welsh produce at its very best whilst enjoying the tranquillity of the gardens.

• The gardens are open daily, 10:00 – 16:00 (If visiting when the café is closed, please use the yellow honesty box on the back of the main gate)
• The café is open April – September, Tuesday – Sunday, 10:00 – 16:00. When visiting outside of this time, please use the yellow honesty box on the back of the main gate.
• The house is open year-round, Wednesday – Sunday, 10:30 – 16:00.

All proceeds and donations go towards maintaining the gardens.