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'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.

(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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

At this time, Bodfan also took up junior and senior Harvard fellowships at Dumbarton Oaks when he studied American landscape and urban design extensively and in depth.

Examples of the former include proposals concerning the Green Belt around Bristol and a visual impact assessment of the Llanberis pumped storage hydro-electric scheme.

His consultancy involved a variety of commissions including country park proposals at Sandringham, Beaulieu and Stratfield Saye among others, a new computer centre for the Department of the Environment at Swansea, a campus landscape at Robinson College, Cambridge.

[5] (for which he received an honorary fellowship), urban and out-of-town shopping centres, biological corridors for Milford Haven and London, flood relief schemes for the Rivers Mole and Wey and a number of housing and garden projects large and small.