Roath Park Conservatory (Tropical House)

Roath Park was opened on 20 June 1894. According to the Cadw register, work on its botanic garden began as early as 1892, and a propagating house, now lost, was being built at the garden's south end in May 1894. Two glasshouses followed. The Cactus House opened to visitors in May 1905 for a collection of 500 cacti donated to the park by a resident of Whitchurch; the 30 m Chrysanthemum House was built beside it in 1907, and its first winter display drew around 12,000 visitors. The last chrysanthemum display took place in or about 1968.

In the early 1970s the city's Parks Committee set aside some £20,000 in its 1973-74 estimates for a new conservatory, to rise on the site of the two old houses. A first scheme, with a central pond and perimeter staging for potted tropical plants, close to the show house at Wisley, was judged too expensive; the revised plan called for a temperate glasshouse with a landscaped interior, stocked mostly from the castle nursery and manageable by one member of staff. The Cardiff Parks website believes it opened in the summer of 1975, with a 5p entry charge in June; the Cadw register says only the late 1970s.

In the 1980s and 1990s the local press advertised concerts, rose-care demonstrations and, in 1997, a two-day 'rain forest' with snakes and tarantulas in the house. The glazing was redone in 1988, the entrance remodelled around 2013 to create a plant shop, and in 2018 the Friends of Roath Park raised the money to replace the pond liner.

The glasshouse measures 43 m by 19.5 m, excluding the entrance foyer, or roughly 840 m² on the ground (calculated from those two figures). Designed as a temperate house, kept at about 12 °C on winter nights, it has a fully landscaped interior: a large pond, a waterfall and planting beds, rather than the perimeter staging and climber-bearing purlins of the first scheme. The Cadw register describes a large modern glasshouse of the late 1970s at the south-west end of the botanic garden, beside a lawn planted with cherry trees.

The glazing is mixed. In 1988 the council had the original panes, which broke regularly, replaced with triple-wall polycarbonate, judged safer and expected to cut heating costs by at least 26% a year; the work, partly funded by the council's energy conservation programme, was estimated at £40,000 in May, and the South Wales Echo reported in October a five-week closure and a cost of £53,000. But the tender issued in July 1988 covered only about 60% of the existing glazing (900 m²), in 16 mm sheets, with renewal of the glazing bars: the envelope has therefore combined glass and polycarbonate since then.

The council names palms, banana plants, orchids and a bat flower. The pond, fed by a waterfall, holds fish (carp according to Cardiff Parks), terrapins and a pair of whistling ducks. A 2026 caption on the Outdoor Cardiff page shows a pineapple plant. The Cardiff Parks site keeps two plant lists, from 1980 and from 1993-94.

A small bed against the entrance wall held cyclamen in winter and often geraniums in summer in the 1990s, before giving way in the early 2000s to a cactus collection, removed around 2013 when a plant shop was created at the entrance. The local press also advertised a trail inspired by 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' in 1997, a Welsh National Opera brass concert in 1998, and a children's day on the animals of the pond in 1999.

The conservatory stands at the south of the park, in the former botanic garden below the lake dam, with access from Lake Road West and Lake Road East; a Grade II listed footbridge crosses the Roath Brook nearby. Being heated, it can be visited in any season; it fits easily into a walk around the park. Close by are the 29-acre lake (nearly 12 ha), the Scott Memorial, a clock-tower lighthouse raised in 1910 to mark the Terra Nova's departure, the rose garden of the former botanic garden and a cafe. The shop sells plants and food for the lake's swans and ducks. Works linked to the dam may affect parts of the park: check before travelling.