Gwaynynog is an eighteenth-century house on a more ancient site (nprn 27243), situated on a rolling plateau on the north side of the Ystrad valley just west of Denbigh, and set in parkland (700096). It is notable for its superb position with distant views to the Clwydian Range, and for its historical associations with Samuel Johnson, who visited Gwaynynog, and with the author Beatrix Potter who used the garden and kitchen garden as settings in some of her children's books (700097). 

The garden, probably of late eighteenth-century date, is on level ground to the east and south of the house, sub-circular on plan and bounded by a well-preserved stone ha-ha. It is mostly laid out to lawn with an area of widely-spaced old oak trees along the east side, and two large sycamores on the west. A small scarp south-east of the house is the location of former tennis courts. At the west end of the house, in the angle between the south and north wings, is a small formal courtyard garden laid out with stone-paved paths, rosebeds and low yew hedges, and bounded by a rockwork bank on the south side and a retaining wall topped by a yew hedge on the west side. In the centre of the north end is a sundial on a square pillar. This area was laid out in the early twentieth century.
Three small areas of mixed woodland project from the garden, one downslope from the south-east corner (Nut Walk) and two from the west side, which together frame the near views from the house and garden. One view is pictured in Potter’s ‘The Floppsy Bunnies’.

A path flanked by a cypress hedge along the west side of the house and outbuildings leads to a small rockwork garden within a rough stone wall. It is laid out with narrow gravel paths, a central lily pool and much rockwork, with a stone arch at its north end leading into the kitchen garden (700097). Just to the west of this garden a stone, barrel-vaulted chamber, is thought to have been an ice-house.

Sources:
Cadw 1995: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Clwyd,  100-103 (ref: PGW(C)58(DEN)).
Ordnance Survey third-edition 25-inch map: sheet Denbighshire XIII.7 (1910)

RCAHMW, 19 April 2022