PGW(Gd)13(CON)

Oakbank and Bulkeley Mill  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Conwy  

Caerhun  

276116  

371598  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Small riverside woodland garden incorporating both level and very steep areas; informal plantings of interesting trees with herbaceous and bulbous woodland subjects.  

1920s to 1950s.  

The registered area comprises a small riverside woodland garden dating to the 1920s to the 1950s. The garden incorporates both level and very steep areas with informal planting of trees, shrubs and bulbs. The garden has an important historical association with the gardener and writer A.T Johnson (Arthur Tysilio Johnson) who developed and laid out the garden in his favoured wild/woodland garden style and used it as the basis for several books. Much of his structure and planting remains. The gardens of Oakbank and Bulkeley Mill are located on the west side of the Conwy valley, to the south-east of Rowen. The garden occupies a long, narrow site between the minor road from Rowen to Caerhun and the Afon Roe. Since Johnson's time it has been divided into two main parts, one belonging to Oakbank and the other to Bulkeley Mill, a converted corn mill a short distance to the north. Oakbank, the house in which the Johnsons lived, is a split-level house on a very steep site, built between 1889 and 1900 and originally called The Bungalow. It backs onto the road from Roewen to Caerhun, which forms the eastern boundary of the garden, and overlooks the garden from its vantage point at the top of the steepest part. To the north of Oakbank is Bulkeley Mill, a much older stone building consisting of a mill with wheel in situ and the mill house attached, re-converted to a dwelling by the Johnsons. The mill race is one of the main features of the garden. The original garden at Oakbank consisted of only the steep bank crowned by the house, with a very narrow strip of flat ground below it bounded by the mill race on the west. In the 1920s A. T. Johnson and his wife were able to purchase the further flat area between the mill race and the river, and on this developed their woodland garden, owing much to the William Robinson school of 'wild gardening'. Later they acquired a small, more open area to the south, and in the 1940s, after the war, Bulkeley Mill and the land around it. This was used partly to extend the woodland garden, and partly to grow roses and other subjects appreciating a sunnier site. Johnson was clearly influenced by William Robinson's 'wild gardening' style, but went on to make the woodland garden his own. A genuine plantsman, he particularly loved carpeting plants which needed little care, and planted them in large blocks; when he found something good he wrote about it and passed it on. Several seedlings of different species from the garden, both deliberately and accidentally bred, bear his name. The garden today has inevitably changed since the Johnsons' time, but most of the structure and much of the planting remains. The paths which criss-cross the steep bank on the east and wander over the flat areas on the west, the various water features and many of the trees have survived. Significant Views: Superb views over the gardens from Oakbank and views west from the gardens across the surrounding landscape. Source: Cadw 1998: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Conwy, Gwynedd & the Isle of Anglesey, 124-7 (ref: PGW(Gd)13(CON)).