Llanbadarn Campus

Llanbadarn campus, falls within the settlement boundary and is currently under mixed uses including part of the university campus, an equine centre, pastoral fields and substations.

The university campus and equine centre are designated as a Historic Park and Garden within CADW’s register, jointly listed with Plas Penglais, Penglais Campus and the National Library of Wales.

Llanbadarn campus is  laid out on a hillside sloping down to the south-west. The campus was developed from the 1970s onwards and was originally the Welsh College of Agriculture, Coleg Ceredigion and the Department of Library Studies. In 1994 it was absorbed by the university.

The landscaping and planting was the responsibility of Mrs Alina Rogers, of the Welsh College of Agriculture. The campus was adventurously landscaped in much the same way as the Penglais campus, with every

available space being planted with trees and mounds of shrubs, most of them evergreen. Joy Harris, the then Grounds Supervisor, worked with Mrs Rogers, with plants and encouragement from Basil Fox and John Corfield of the University Penglais campus who intern became the Head Gardener of Llanbadarn campus and in 1994 Grounds Supervisor for all the university grounds.

The main entrance is off a minor road running along the north-west side of the site. The road is bordered by pines and the entrance is flanked by banks of heather, hebe, Griselinia littoralis and Viburnum tinus, with eucalyptus trees on the upper side and birch on the lower.

On the south-west side of the Coleg Ceredigion building, in the middle of the site, is a lawn with a circular bed of Trachycarpus fortunei in its north corner. A path runs the length of the south-west front of the building, next to which are three large concrete planters with oleanders in them. The path down the north-west side of the lawn is densely planted with mixed shrubs. A low residential building to the south has a densely planted long border against it, planted with mixed shrubs including fatsia, lonicera, ligustrum, choisya, berberis, cotoneaster, hebe and escallonia.

Further down the slope is a lawn sparsely planted with birch trees. Steep slopes are treated in the same way as on the main campus, with cascading planting of Cotoneaster microphyllus.