Bodnant at Risk Garden in Snowdonia

Bodnant Garden is among the National Trust's most spectacular properties.

It's a work of art, crafted over the course of a century by generations of gardeners.

But in recent times, visitor numbers have declined and costs escalated.

The garden has been neglected

probably in the late 1920s,

perhaps just at the early '30s, in very compacted soil now around them.

The plants are sort of built up on these little mounds, where the

Troy Scott Smith, the head gardener,

And, of course, once we know that,

an aging collection and a very real threat from a new and devastating

plant disease, Bodnant is facing the toughest conservation challenge

thousands of plants in the garden whose identity is a mystery.

mysteries requires ingenuity.

All new arrivals in the garden are labelled with a metal tag.

Troy and his colleague Graham are using a metal detector to hunt for tags that disappeared long ago.

This technique avoids having

damaging the roots too much and finding something useful.

Troy has a massive job on his hands.

We think there's about 50,000 different plants at Bodnant and we've

got lots which unfortunately the labels have been lost over the years.

animals or gardeners working or the metal snaps and it drops down.

It's very easy to be buried

So often Troy has to examine

We have a clue as to its parentage.

You know, looking at the flower type and the leaf, I can show you

So that's something that we do

But it just takes time, you know.

Might take us several years to got 25,000 other ones to do as well.

I don't think there's anything here

No luck with the label this time.

But they'll keep looking because they know how vital it is to build

of the plants they have here.

At the heart of the garden is a unique collection of rhododendrons -

one of the great glories of Bodnant.

But what makes the collection truly unique are the hybrids.

From the 1920s, Bodnant's gardeners created hundreds of new varieties

mother Lady Aberconway share

the family passion for the garden, especially its famous rhododendrons.

I love it because it's one of the most delicate early ones and I love the, as you were saying, the pink,

Michael manages the Gardens

His grandfather Henry McLaren, the second Lord Aberconway,

the gardens as it is today.

My grandfather, of course, largely created the place in that he built

the great terraces and he did all sorts of other things in the garden.

It was a very exciting time -

rhododendron seeds were coming out of China and he supported financially

some of these plant-hunting expeditions, he got some of the seeds, as did a lot of other gardens.

And there was great excitement growing them, seeing how they

rhododendrons in the garden here,

it's something which the garden

has become known for and which we're all passionate about.

was a leading industrialist.

Lord Aberconway - the chairman of John Brown's, leading her majesty.

His company, John Brown Shipyards,

As well as making waves in the business world, he was also at

the helm of the British gardening establishment as president of the Royal Horticultural Society.

Throughout the 20th century, the Aberconways indulged their

passion for plants - especially

The technical expertise was supplied by their head gardeners, remarkably,

particularly rhododendrons,

one sees out in the garden is down to

He's sceptical about their value to

them up on the off-chance they

a wealth of archive material.

frightfully boring, stuff about 19th-century business deals.

It's all a complete mess because and haven't yet re-plastered,

otherwise I'm sure my father would have cottoned on to it and it would be in the public domain.

There might be hidden gems.

It's a fantastic moment for Alison Clarke and Fiona Braithwaite.

The first Bodnant gardeners to be given access to the archive.

There's miles of it, isn't there?

I've got a list of Kingdon-Ward

And within minutes of opening the first files, they've struck gold.

Look at this! Wardian cases were brought back containing rhododendron

But unfortunately the rhododendrons were all withered. Oh...Kingdon-Ward!

and some of his most important expeditions to the Far East.

seen direct evidence like this and such precise information

about exactly which plants he and other plant-hunters sent back.

It's a Kingdon-Ward expedition and

it's addressed to Harry and of course

They're asking for some more funds

It just sort of proves you know all the money they did invest in the various Kingdon-Ward expeditions.

Amazing stuff here, you know.

Apart from Kingdon-Ward, there's

Reginald Farrer, Joseph Rock.

importance of them is they're really valuable bits of information.

It's just very exciting and extraordinary really that they've still got the original papers.

I think this is what a lot of people would like to get their hands on

because it is plant-hunters and that's what Bodnant is all about - it's about the plants.

There's so much unidentified plant material in the garden

or it came from expeditions.

Troy seems to be winning the

but a new fight is just beginning with a devastating plant disease.

Gardens are works of art, you know.

You know, we could very easily lose the special character of the garden

50, 80% of our mainstay collection.

And also you know we're losing plants

We've got a good collection

there may only be one of its kind and if that's the one that gets

Phytophthora or sudden oak disease made the headlines six years ago.

A potentially devastating tree disease which has caused widespread

damage in America has been discovered in trees here for the first time.

The fungus has been spotted in three trees in Cornwall - a horse-chestnut, an evergreen oak and a beech tree.

Phytophthora is the MRSA of plants.

It affects the plants that are so important to the Bodnant collection,

found evidence of the disease,

I don't think it is typical of what I know of the symptoms of ramorum.

I don't think it is typical

infection is in this rhododendron.

But just around the corner, a group of newly-planted viburnums

Let's see if I can clean that back.

That's pretty indicative of phytophthora because you've got

this foxy, reddy brown colour

That's very symptomatic, actually.

That's what it should look like

the root system into the plant

and you say that you've had seven

And we've just had another one there that we've taken as a sample,

If that comes back as positive for

because they're all of the same batch and then destroy them

We have to incinerate it and remove

So, for the rhododendron ponticum, it means a hell of a lot of work

because there's so much of it here.

It just keeps on spreading.

This was about 20 foot high

and you see the size of the area we're having to clear here.

When you look at the actual list,

of the plants that we've got in this garden that could be a natural host,

So we've just got to get rid of this ponticum while we can, really.

Even the stuff that hasn't got it, we need to get rid of it before

it spreads to the stuff that we don't

The great fear is that one day some of the much rarer plants will

have to be consigned to the flames.

He's on his way to Cornwall

Ian Wright is a National Trust adviser on phytophthora which has

The disease was first found and identified in 2005, which

But I feel that we've actually

Rather than being reactive, we've started to become proactive towards our responses towards it,

In a collection packed with rare species, Trengwainton has been

forced to destroy diseased plants,

But it's not just infected plants

here you can see this rather large

And this was where...well, there

decision to actually take it out.

the Central Science Laboratory that told us that drimys was one

of the major spore-producing plants that there actually is.

like the magnolia campbellii,

Trengwainton has been proactive by removing high-risk plants

the disease and I think awareness

and education is as much of a part

we've actually had to do as well.

And really educating people because

I went to Scottish gardens and we had to walk through a foot-bath

Is that something that we're

I think the whole foot-bath scenario it actually doesn't work very well.

live in now, this won't be the end

of the pests and diseases that come to actually challenge us.

opportunities and become proactive

It's been a thought-provoking

I think we have to think of it as an opportunity and I think gaps like this are not necessarily bad.

through to the countryside, you're thinking about introducing

you've got spaces to do that.

gardens that space is endless.

Bodnant and I've got so many

So, yeah, an enjoyable visit, lessons to learn phytopthora-wise,

but lots of positives I think

but there are other challenges

Troy and Alison are on their

a rhododendron called the Mikado - a stunning pink when it's in bloom.

The Mikado has proved impossible to propagate by normal methods

and they've decided it needs special treatment to save it.

This big one here? That's the one!

As far as I know, it's the only

Alison is Bodnant's taxonomist with responsibility for identifying

have selected the Mikado for a

If I don't get a result from another method of propagating them.

in the average potting shed.

Let's see what we've got then.

And I think there's something like an 80% success rate, though.

Hopefully in a couple of years I shall be getting my babies back.

This is the last chance saloon

laboratory at Duchy College

Bodnant's cuttings are being treated with the help of a grant from the Royal Horticultural Society.

It's now six months since Troy and Alison packed off their cuttings and they've come to Duchy College

to get a progress report from Ros Smith, the scientist in charge of micropropagation.

Oh, hello. Nice to meet you.

Oh, what's this? Some little babies coming on. They're just starting

So you're pretty pleased with them? The success of ours or... Yes.

Initially it was a bit difficult to actually get contaminate-free

The sterile conditions of the lab

So when we get any plant material, whether it's a shoot or whether

we've got to clean the outside with

But once we've done that, we can either take the vegetative buds

or we can use the flower buds and regenerate from some little shoots,

The plant cells have been grown on in pots of nutrient jelly

and after six months of careful nurturing, there's a result.

piece of material, isn't it?

So, Ros, two or three years down the line we'll be getting some plants

back and, you know, some 30 or 40 plants hopefully from each one.

They ought to do quite nicely and produce quite a lot, I think.

if you know what you're doing.

Angus, who's now nearly 21.

And then through there is another

which got eaten by a rabbit,

That's for my granddaughter

I think it's very good for children

And, you know, a tiny little acorn

When the Aberconway family gave Bodnant to the National Trust

However, Michael McLaren manages Bodnant on an unpaid basis because

to be involved. If we want to be involved in the future, we need to

be able to show that we can still put something into the place.

whether or not to appoint me.

No legal obligation to appoint me

appointed me because they knew that I knew something about horticulture,

enthusiastic about gardening

And so they thought that I could

There's no getting away from the McLarens' deep links with Bodnant,

Lady Aberconway not only plants trees for her grandchildren, she's

also the guardian of the mausoleum where her family is buried.

in a secluded part of the garden

I'm sad you can't see the tablet that I've had done for my husband.

My mother-in-law has a tablet there, my father-in-law, and of course the first Lord and Lady Aberconway.

And there's a space for me,

Even as the restoration work continues on the mausoleum,

Lady Aberconway comes here regularly

and on the other side is his father.

I mean, you just look around at Bodnant and you can see the sense

and the way I think about the garden is, I plant for the future.

But it's also a great privilege

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