If you ever visited the From Another Kingdom exhibition here at the Botanic Garden’s Great Glasshouse, you’ll likely remember the beautiful ceramic fungi models.
These life-size representations of mainly British fungi, mostly made by Shirley Talboys, not only looked real but they were precise in every way – the stipe rings, gills, pores and bold or delicate colours – everything was perfect.
After being seen by over half a million visitors, the exhibition closed in 2017.
The models are owned by the British Mycological Society and they have now given their permission for some of the models to be re-displayed at National Trust’s Dinefwr Park Estate in Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire. From the beginning of March 2023, you’ll be able to see them in one of the display rooms of Dinefwr Park’s magnificent Newton House. I took them over last week and loved the enthusiastic response from General Manager Meg Anthony and her team who are really helping to raise the profile of nature in the Park with this and other displays and art commissions.
They’ve invited me over to give a talk and walk about fungi later in the year.
I regularly walk across Dinefwr’s historic parkland and love observing the differences between its fungi and that of the Botanic Garden. With almost a thousand years of documented use, and with some of the oldest parkland trees in Wales, it should be a fascinating walk. I hope you can join me.