Brechfa Forest Garden consists of 89 test plots of a range of trees to test how they would respond to being planted and managed in a forest style setting. This facility is the only site of its type in Wales, and one of only 4 spread across the UK.
Established by local foresters in the late 1950s and early 1960s the original objective appears to have been the establishment of a collection of species from which measurements and observations could be made on the suitability of species for British forest use.
Many of these trees have matured and now form an arboretum with a difference as, instead of one or two trees of each type, there are whole stands of trees from all over the world.
These include:
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- giant redwoods from California
- eucalyptus from Australia
- nothofagus from South America
- firs from all the continents
- a variety of European species like sessile oak, walnut and spruces
Brechfa Forest Garden can be reached by following the Forest Garden Trail this is a way marked trail staring from the forest car park in Abergorlech. The old walk leaflet for the forest garden published by Forestry Commission is available to download. There is a description of the walk in the walks leaflet published by NRW and available to download on the Discover Carmarthenshire website.
If you would prefer to follow the route with the aid of map app on your mobile phone we have prepared a gpx file for you to download. A gpx file contains information on waypoints and trails which can be imported into any of the common map apps available on mobile phones.
We have put together a document describing the forest garden walk and listing the species in each plot. Brechfa-Forest-Gardens-leaflet
We have been working with Forest Research with the assistance of a grant from Carmarthenshire County Council to make the research records for the forest garden widely available, and volunteers have been working on a project to provide additional interpretation on each plot.
