Vaynor Park, a restored early seventeenth-century brick house (nprn 21521), is located to the south-west of the village of Berriew. It lies within a landscape park of nineteenth-century date but with much earlier origins (700392). Both park and garden are notable for their fine mature trees. 
Most of the garden occupies an L-shaped area to the east, south and south-west of the house, bounded on the east and south by a steep, curving scarp. The entrance court to the west of the house forms the remainder.

The earliest evidence for a garden at Vaynor Park is the 1746 estate map, which shows a formal layout, parts of which survive such as the entrance courtyard which was then laid out formally in an upper and lower terrace, with a central axial walk to the front door and a flight of steps up the terrace. Flanking the house, against the north and south walls, were two square pavilions. To the south was a semi-circular apron of grass and four rectangular features, possibly flowerbeds, around it. Today, the court is laid out with a central grass oval around which is a gravel drive. The entrance courtyard is likely to be contemporary with the house, dating to c.1640. 

East of the house is a gravel terrace and a level lawn, below which is a grass slope, planted with shrubs, to the garden boundary. On the north edge of the garden a belt of mixed trees includes two large cedars of Lebanon. The south side of the garden has both formal and informal areas. Next to the house is a stone paved terrace (LB: 16400) with short stretches of stone balustrading, in a fretwork pattern, at the east and west ends. The terrace is revetted with a high brick wall. The terrace to the south of the house would also appear to be part of the original, seventeenth-century garden, although it was later modified. Below the terrace, and continuing west to the garden boundary, is a wide grass walk which leads into a plantation of tall Douglas firs under-planted with mainly evergreen shrubs, in particular rhododendrons and azaleas. Except at the west end, where the ground rises, the walk is bounded on the south by a steep grass scarp.

South of the grass walk the character of the garden changes to mostly lawn planted with ornamental trees and shrubs, and a formal, semi-circular arrangement of beds is cut into a levelled area of lawn below the house. This is reached by a flight of stone steps, flanked on the west by three columnar cypresses, which descends the grass walk bank opposite the terrace steps. Below is a slope down to a perimeter walk and boundary, where there are further mature specimen deciduous and coniferous trees, including cedars and wellingtonias. Large old rhododendrons grow on the steep slope down to the walk and towards its west end a flight of rough stone steps, flanked by rhododendrons and hydrangeas, curves down to it.

At the north end of the house a small, sunken garden area is enclosed on the west by a two-storey block and on the north by a brick parapet wall above a steep drop to the garden boundary and park. This area was created when the former kitchen garden was demolished in the 1960s. It is a rectangular paved area with clipped box and yew plantings and brick-edged borders. Two flights of dressed stone steps on the east side lead up to a small brick paved area with four beds and a central sundial on a circular base.

Major alterations, designed by Thomas Penson, were made to the garden and entrance court in the 1840s, the layout of the present garden appearing on the tithe map of 1844. Penson altered the terrace, made the green walk and altered the entrance court. A plan of proposals for changes, dated 1841, shows the new layout for the entrance court, with no pavilions, no terracing and a central oval, as it is now. Further changes occurred in the early part of the twentieth-century with the creation of the woodland area at the west end of the garden and the addition of Asiatic introductions including azaleas, rhododendrons and hydrangeas.
A brick icehouse was situated within the grounds but is now demolished. Its precise location is unknown.

The kitchen garden lies about 250m south-west of the house (700393).

Sources:
Cadw 1999: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Powys, pp 255-259 (ref: PGW (Po)32(POW)).
Sylvia P. Beaman and Susan Roaf, The Ice Houses of Britain, p.538.

RCAHMW, 25 July 2022