The National Botanic Garden of Wales is a great place to come and look for wild fungi.
You’ll find all types of mushroom-friendly habitat here – woods, fields, lawns and flower beds.
Some of our fungi are very special. We’ve wild mushrooms that have been found nowhere else in Wales, fungi that are rare across the UK and on our Waun Las National Nature Reserve, we have a meadow that has an internationally important collection of multi-coloured waxcap fungi. We also have some of the most bizarre and beautiful fungi on Earth.
Our job is to help people understand why we have such interesting fungi here.
It’s partly to do with our organic approach to farming, our practice of making our own compost and mulch, the way we leave dead wood to rot in our woods and probably because we look. We have an increasing amount of new and experienced mycologists who come looking for fungi here, and we are dedicated to helping Wales develop a thriving, enthusiastic and knowledgeable mycological community.
We run fungus forays every autumn, host a meeting of Welsh mycologists in spring and actively promote fungi conservation especially grassland fungi. We encourage artistic interpretations of fungi through exhibitions and events and help to improve enthusiasts’ fungi identification skills. We have a developing mycological library helped by generous donations from Stan Hughes and Roy Watling and we promote fungi through TV, radio and the written media.
Our Wales Fungus Day, initiated in 2011, has now expanded into a British Mycological Society run UK Fungus Day. Occurring on the second Sunday every October, this multi-disciplinary event draws hundreds of visitors to the Garden every year, many of whom will discover the spores of knowledge and inspiration to begin a lifetime of interest into nature’s secret world of fungi.