John St. Bodfan Gruffydd

John St. Bodfan Gruffydd (5 April 1910 – 25 November 2004) was a Welsh landscape architect.

John St Bodfan Gruffydd was born on 5 April 1910 at Plas Eryr, Snowdonia (Eryri), Gwynedd, Wales, the son of William St Bodfan Griffiths, and into a farming family.

His maternal grandfather, descended from cattle drovers at Castell, Gwynedd, qualified as a doctor of medicine at Edinburgh, eventually settling at Llanddeiniolen as a GP, a practice mostly with slate quarrymen at Bethesda.

Bodfan spent the first few years of his life in his grandfather's home.

His paternal grandfather farmed at Henfaes, Aber, Gwynedd, but a typhoid epidemic decimated the family and he only escaped by going to New Zealand.

Bodfan's father studied at University College, Bangor, and at Aberystwyth, and later in 1913 he moved the family (including two older sisters) to a teaching appointment in Uppingham School, Rutland, in England, where he was also in charge of the Officers' Training Corps.

The family stayed there during World War I and Bodfan did not attend school till he was seven because "my grandfather believed it was bad to force young children" and, even after attending Miss Masters' Dame school (with its Quaker leanings) he did not learn to read until aged nine.

The weekly dancing lessons were more successful and it was only later when quite grown up that he discovered he had dyslexia.

(As an adult he had handwriting tuition in Eric Gill's studio, a skill he exercised into his late 80s, as witnessed in his beautiful yearly Christmas greeting cards.) Summer holidays were invariably spent back in Porthdinllaen, on the Llyn peninsula, south Caernarfonshire, now part of the coastal AONB.

Porthdinllaen farm occupied most of the land between the bay and Edern village - an idyllic location and a haven for wildlife, plants and insects, fruit trees and picturesque coastal scenery.

Bodfan's mother used to say, "It's a lovely day, off you go and enjoy yourselves for, remember, the opportunity will never come again".

She was the first pupil at Bangor County School for Girls and went on to University College, Bangor, where she played hockey and tennis before graduating in botany from Bedford College.

She and her husband were keen botanists and no doubt influenced the development of Bodfan's later career.

Following World War I the family moved from Uppingham back to Bangor in 1926 where his father became headmaster at Friar's School.

Their house was on high ground above the tunnel for the railway from Bangor to Holyhead.

Bodfan's father frequently took his son out 'botanising' up the Nant Francon pass - an experience when, Bodfan claims, he became aware of ecological relationships.

Bodfan, aged 12, "scraped into the bottom class" at Uppingham School - on the basis of an IQ test.

He had failed all the standard examinations ("he could not remember ever having passed any exam").

He found French and Latin much easier than English - Latin being "more logical like Welsh".

At Uppingham School he "enjoyed the freedom and sporting activities away from his parents".

The problem of what subjects to follow was curtailed by a school epidemic and all boys were sent home; his mother presented him with a pamphlet extolling the joys of landscape architecture and, for 'work experience', he was sent to spend some time with Thomas Mawson, planner and landscape architect in Lancaster.

Instead of going back to school, he remained as an articled pupil and began learning about surveying, planning and design, classical gardens and botany of the Lake District.

To develop his horticultural knowledge he went to RHS Wisley in 1928 but wasn't too enamoured with the teaching he received and, despite being introduced to rock gardens, the work of Gertrude Jekyll, Lutyens and the Chelsea Flower Show, he was expelled from the course for a minor misdemeanour.

There was a period of further pupilage at Mawson's London office which he found exciting but he felt he'd had enough of education and his parents agreed he needed a break.

So off to New Zealand he went - staying on a farm but the two years working cattle and horse riding did not attract him to a career in agriculture.

After a bout of appendicitis, he spent his convalescence exploring the country until quite by chance Jack Mawson (a son of Thomas) arrived in Wellington as Director of Town Planning just as the farming experience finished and a happy useful working relationship developed.

During this time he attended courses in economics, sociology and statistical method as well as in library cataloguing at the Library of the House of Representatives.

Altogether he spent four years in the antipodes but nostalgia for Britain beckoned and Bodfan made his way back to Wales only to confront again the problem of his jumbled up training.

Bangor had a three-year agriculture diploma course that did not require a matriculation qualification (the New Zealand farmwork being taken in lieu) so this was applied for (in 1932).

The course consisted of botany, chemistry, economics, forestry, zoology with two summers of farm work, including a term on a poultry and dairy farm in East Lothian and a period on a mixed farm in Cornwall.

But having to be a vet was too much and "then and there" decided that he had no future in farming livestock.

And travel was still in his veins and he set off in his final year to Skåna in Sweden to study fruit farming and subsequently to Uppsala for one year doing soil science.

He concluded that the "landscape of Sweden was not unattractive but the sheer monotony made people feel ill - 'Uppsala luft' - no wonder too much schnapps was consumed!".

In 1936 he "left Sweden with mixed feelings" to attend a practical course in market gardening at a local farm institute in Wales and as fresh fruit and vegetables were not obtainable locally in Llyn he decided to grow them himself.

As John St Bodfan Gruffydd (*) he set up his business, in 1942 became AILA, and by 1945 was "selling the best strawberries sold in Liverpool market!"

(* the date when Bodfan adopted the Gruffydd spelling is not clear - it was after Uppingham but before producing what is believed to be his first landscape drawing.)

Then in 1945 and quite serendipitously David Lloyd George asked Bodfan to design a garden in memory of his wife, Dame Margaret.

And so he was able to turn all the talents he had acquired over 20 years to design and planting, and, in his own words, "I suddenly realised that it was landscape itself and its design which really interested me".

Work experience in landscape design began in private practice in 1946 in Wales: the first commission being a memorial garden to Dame Margaret Lloyd George at Coed Morg, Abersoch, and then later many other Welsh gardens, housing estates (with Colwyn Foulkes, which won bronze medals, and Clough Williams-Ellis) and industrial premises, including land reclamation.

Subsequently in 1953 Bodfan was employed as landscape architect to the development corporations in the new towns of Harlow (with Frederick Gibberd) and Crawley, 1953-7 and 1957-61 respectively, before resuming private practice in the late 1950s.