Your journey round the Botanic Garden begins when you enter through the Gatehouse – a new building inspired by ancient Welsh roundhouses (like those seen at Castell Henllys in Pembrokeshire). Designed by Norman Foster & Partners, the roof of the building is circular and inverted whilst the wooden cladding is Canadian red cedar.
This unique structure houses the ticketing office and a beautiful water sculpture, ‘Thirty Three Thousand, Seven Hundred and Ninety Eight’ by Marion Kalmus. This is the first of many water features throughout the Garden which draw our attention to the importance of water in our lives – for without water there would be no plants and without plants there would be no animal life on earth. The title reflects the number of plant species that were threatened by extinction in 2000, the year when the National Botanic Garden of Wales opened.