Exbury Gardens

Exbury Gardens is a woodland garden covering 81 hectares in Hampshire’s New Forest. It holds the national collection of Nyssa and Oxydendrum trees and is recognised on the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. The garden began in 1919 when Lionel Nathan de Rothschild bought the estate and set out to create a grand landscape. Exbury House, a neoclassical mansion built in the 1920s, stands within the grounds but is not open to visitors. The village of Exbury lies just east of Beaulieu, close to Buckler’s Hard, and the gardens are reached by road or the New Forest Tour bus in summer. The garden’s paths lead through special collections such as the Hydrangea Walk, Rock Garden and Camellia Walk, which follows the Beaulieu river before returning past the pond. The Five Arrows Gallery indoors displays lachenalias and orchids. A network of 35 kilometres of underground piping once supplied three large ponds and a water tower, built to support the garden’s scale. Spring brings flowering shrubs and autumn brings vivid colour, making both seasons popular times to visit. Film from 1967 in the Cinema Museum shows how the gardens looked decades ago. At the north-east corner, the Exbury Steam Railway runs for 311 millimetres gauge through tunnels and gardens. Built in 2000–2001, the line uses locomotives made for the track, including one that carried Queen Elizabeth II. Trains often run double-headed to cope with demand, and a larger engine named Marriloo entered service in 2008. The railway also runs Ghost Trains in October and Santa Steam Specials before Christmas, while a diesel locomotive named Eddy handles shunting duties.