Penrhyn Castle, an early nineteenth-century neo-Norman castle (nprn 16687), is located on the Menai Strait, to the north of Llandegai. It lies centrally within a roughly circular landscape park (700208) and is surrounded by well-preserved gardens laid out during the nineteenth century by the Pennant family (86440).
The kitchen garden lies about 400m north of the house in a relocation of its original site, west of the house, which was reused as a flower garden (16692). It is no longer used for the production of fruit and vegetables and now has a variety of other uses, mostly as gardens by the inhabitants of nearby houses on the south, and is now named Maes-y-gerddi.

The garden covers some six acres. It is rectangular on plan with extensions on the north and south, that on the south now the garden of Penrhyn, the Douglas Pennant family home, formerly the gardener's house. This extension is an irregular pentangle, long axis east by west, with the house at the east end; extension and house may predate the main enclosure.  

The garden walls are mostly intact, rising to 5m high in places, the main entrance is through the west wall. The walls of the southern extension are stone, lined with brick on north and west sides. In 1889 the main garden was divided into six unequal areas, the north-west part separately enclosed and given over to glasshouses and other buildings, now mostly gone; this area is now a forestry yard. There were also glasshouses in the adjoining section. Along the south side of the two northern sections, east of the glasshouse area, is an unusual 2m high fruit wall, which partly survives, with Morello cherries remaining on the north side. There were once fruit trees on all the walls, lining the paths, and also free-standing. Some wall fruit remains on the north and west walls, perhaps survivors from the garden's utilitarian days.
Most of the extensive range of buildings along the exterior west wall survive, though altered. A long range of brick potting sheds and stores along the south wall of the main garden also survive. These include the boiler house for the (former) glasshouses on the other side of the wall, in the southern extension.

North of the main garden is an overgrown strip of ground which once contained another glasshouse. North of this strip is a tarmac drive serving the dwellings in the old laundry, which separates the strip from the former drying green.

Sources:
Cadw 1998: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Conwy, Gwynedd & the Isle of Anglesey, 250-7 (ref: PGW(Gd)40(GWY)).
Ordnance Survey second edition six-inch map: sheet Caernarfonshire VII.SW (1887); third edition 25-inch map: sheet Caernarfonshire VII.9 (1913).

RCAHMW, 26 May 2022