Treborth Botanic Garden

'Our site was developed as a pleasure garden by the Chester and Holyhead Railway Company in the 1840s. The garden was laid out with Cascade, Lime Avenue, and other features, to the design of Sir Joseph Paxton of Crystal Palace fame. It was to be part of Britannia Park, a Victorian extravaganza with Grand Hotel, conservatories and station on the main railway line. But due to funding problems, the whole scheme was abandoned and the site reverted to pasture and woodland.

'In the 1960s, the University bought the patch of woodland by the strait, together with the grassland above it, to develop a collection of plants for the Department of Botany. Parts of the old unimproved pasture now have a variety of management regimes to display the effects of these treatments on the native flora, while other parts have been developed to grow a wide range of wild and cultivated plants from all over the world that flourish in our mild climate with a relatively high rainfall and shelter from Atlantic gales. Several glasshouses give protection to less hardy species and a laboratory allows students and staff to examine plants on-site.'