Exbury Gardens

Exbury Gardens is a famous garden in Hampshire, England, which belongs to a branch of the Rothschild family. It is situated just to the East of Beaulieu across the river from Bucklers Hard. It is well signposted from Beaulieu and from the A326 Southampton to Fawley road in the New Forest.

Exbury is a convert|200|acre|km2|sing=on informal woodland garden with very large collections of rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias, and is often considered the finest garden of its type in the United Kingdom.

Lionel Nathan de Rothschild purchased the Exbury estate in 1919 and soon set to creating a garden on an ambitious scale. The infrastructure included a water tower, three large concrete lined ponds, and convert|22|mi|km of underground piping. Exbury is now open to the public for most of the year, with high seasons in the spring for the flowering shrubs and the autumn for the autumn colour. Other features include the hydrangea walk, the rock garden, with its black swans, the sundial garden which follows an exotic planting, and a camelia walk (which takes you to a path alongside Bealieu river and back via the pond).

The Rothschild's house at Exbury is a neoclassical mansion which was built around an earlier structure in the 1920s. It is not open to the public.

team Railway

In the north east corner of the gardens there is also the Exbury Steam Railway that goes on a journey across the pond in Summer Lane Garden, along the top of the rock gardens and into the American Garden. The railway was built in 2000/2001 as an additional attraction in the gardens. Two narrow gauge style 0-6-2 tender tank locos were built specially for the line by the Exmoor Steam Railway.

The railway however has proved to be more popular than anyone had anticipated, with trains oftern needing to be double headed. To solve this problem, a much larger 2-6-2 tender loco was built at exmoor, and entered service on the line in 2008.

External links

* [http://www.exbury.co.uk/exbury/index.htm Official site]