I visited the American Gardens, located near Pen-y-Garn in Pontypool this morning. It was built as an ornamental garden by the Hanbury family. There is an interesting website here that details some of the history of the garden and the area.
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| Giant Redwood |
The place is well known for having a collection of rare and very large trees such as Californian Redwoods. Lots of local people visit and its a popular spot for dog walkers. I enjoy a birdwatch when I visit and I love the trees all year round they are incredible.
In the centre of the gardens is a lovely ornamental pond that is about 100 meters in length.
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| The ornamental pond |
In recent years there has been some great work done to clean up by volunteers from the American Gardens Environmental Project ( More Here).
This has been my first visit for some time and I must admit it really is looking beautiful.
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| Stonebridge |
There was a lot of colour throughout the gardens provided by rare Rhododendron bushes, ornamental shrubs, tree blossom and wild flowers.
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| Rhododendron flowers |
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| Wild Flowers -Oxeye Daisies |
My favourite flowers were the Water Lilies in the pond. They looked absolutely fabulous.
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| Water Lilies. |
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| Water Lily flowers |
A solitary duckling appeared from no where but I am sure mother duck was not too far and hiding from me.
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| Duckling |
The weather had been on the turn today. After a week of incredibly hot weather with clear skies, the day had started with some rain and clouds. It felt very humid and the sky was quite hazy and cloudy but was gradually starting to heat up again to "scorchio"levels.
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| View over Pen-y-garn toward Pontypool |
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| View looking across the American Gardens. |
I finished off the visit with a bit of birdwatching and I've listed below the species that I found :
- Blue Tit
- Great Tit
- Goldcrest
- Woodpigeon
- Blackbird
- Carrion Crow
- Chaffinch
- Robin
- Wren
- Mallard ( duckling)
- Blackcap
- Nuthatch
- Chiffchaff
- Song Thrush.
There is most definitely more species to be spotted than that but I did not stay that long today.
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