Exploring the lush New Forest oasis of the Rothschild family
Despite the Rothschild name being inextricably linked with money, the family’s true passion lies in Exbury Gardens. By Sharon Smith
The Covid-19 lockdowns have enabled the Rothschild family of Exbury Gardens to prove that their reputed passion for gardening is green-fingered in real life rather than just a rose-tinted vision.
During the first lockdown in March last year, nine of the 10-strong team of gardeners for the 200-acre estate in Hampshire were put on furlough. This left Tom Clarke, the head gardener, to manage on his own and needing all the support he could get, says Lionel de Rothschild, 65. “We’ve all helped out and we’ve all enjoyed it because we’re keen gardeners and it is our garden.”
Exbury is home to a branch of the Rothschild banking dynasty which includes Lionel, his sisters Kate and Charlotte, brother Nick, and their families including Kate’s husband, Marcus Agius. There is even an award-winning garden designer in the clan: Marie-Louise Agius, daughter of Kate and Marcus. Family members have been helping across all of the rooms that make up Exbury Gardens: deadheading, cutting back, pruning, weeding, mowing and undertaking all the normal gardening tasks. Today I am meeting Lionel, Marcus and Marie-Louise.
“I do a lot of cutting back anyway. My father (Edmund de Rothschild, 19162009) used to do it and I’d help him. It’s always been my main task here and it’s very satisfying, because it’s easy to do,
especially where you know the wood is already safely dead,” says Lionel, 65. An urgent task early into lockdown last year was to replenish the formal Sundial Garden. “There we all were with our bottoms in the air busy planting up the beds, which need doing every year,” says Marcus, 74, a banker and former chairman of the board of trustees at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Marcus was awarded a CBE in the 2021 New Year’s Honours List for his services to botany and conservation.
However, they are quick to point out that their own contribution is minuscule compared with that of their gardeners. “What we do is nothing compared to what Tom and his team and the volunteers do here; they deserve all the credit,” says Lionel.
Even before Covid-19 the family always kept a close eye on the gardens, “living and breathing them”, as MarieLouise says. They walk in them morning and evening, and are in daily contact with Clarke about maintenance and any areas that need immediate attention – for example, any hazards or damaged shrubs and trees.
As woodland gardens, Exbury Gardens are famous for their rhododendrons and azaleas, many of which were propagated as hybrids by the current Lionel’s grandfather Lionel de Rothschild [1882-1942], who founded the estate in 1919. He worked on the gardens for 20 years until the outbreak of war brought the project to a temporary halt.
The younger generations have all continued to develop the gardens, which now contain more than 24,000 recorded plants, including rare shrubs and trees and national collections of nyssa and oxydendrum.
Marcus says that planting has been expanded to create year-round interest for visitors, and now include camellias, spring bulbs, primroses, salvias, acers, hydrangeas, stewartias, wisteria, magnolias and trees and shrubs for autumn colour and winter bark. Summer perennials are found in the Sundial Garden and the Centenary Garden, the latter designed by Marie-Louise and opened in July 2019 by Prince Charles.
Formerly old tennis courts, the intimate scale of the Centenary garden contrasts with the wooded acres beyond. The five arrows of the Rothschild coat of arms are set into a paving circle and a rich and riotous planting of grasses and perennials threatens to burst the boundaries of the formal layout.
This constant variety is now one of the most enjoyable parts of the gardens for the family, says Lionel. “I like the fact that although I know the gardens well, each year I seem to notice plants I’ve not paid attention to before and think, ‘That’s looking lovely.’ There’s always something new to see.”
And Marcus admits: “There are some flowers where it’s like bumping into friends you’ve not seen for a while. I say, ‘hello old friend’.” Lionel says his father used to talk to the plants too. “He’d say, ‘good plant’. Or sometimes, ‘bad plant’.”
No one knows if their ancestor Lionel de Rothschild chatted with the plants but he was certainly dedicated to them. Marie-Louise says: “My great-grandfather described himself as ‘a banker by hobby and a gardener by profession’.”
Lionel de Rothschild chose woodland gardens over formal beds of annuals and perennials because he said they would take less maintenance. However, as he left no corner of the 200 acres uncultivated, they still add up to a lot of maintenance. So it is fortunate that his ancestors have inherited his gardening genes, says Marie-Louise, 43, though in her own case it was not immediately evident. Despite having enjoyed an idyllic childhood at Exbury, a career in horticulture did not instantly beckon. But finance was a complete non-starter.
“Banking never crossed my mind, which is fascinating considering that I grew up with it. I think it was the prospect of being cooped up in an office and taking the Tube each day that put me off. I have always been enormously active,” she says.
Having graduated from the University of Edinburgh with an MA in sociology, horticulture might not have been a career for Marie-Louise at all if a cousin had not happened to mention that the KLC School of Design in London was offering a new course in garden design.
“I said, ‘What’s garden design?’ My cousin said, ‘I don’t know but why don’t you go along and see?’” says Marie-Louise. She did, decided to “give it a go” and signed up there and then.
It proved a good choice. “From the first second of the first day I was completely hooked, a round peg in a round hole. Nothing else in my education had hit me with such a sucker punch to my stomach before,” she remembers.
Now an RHS judge and a director at Chelsea Gold Medal winning Balston Agius, a landscape and garden design practice, she says her training has led her to look at the gardens with fresh eyes. “I learn so much from them horticulturally. I’m always taking pictures of plants here then looking them up. You never stop learning, because of the sheer number of plants in the world.”
The estate is now a charitable trust, run by the family members as a board of directors headed by Marcus, and with Lionel as chairman of the trustees. The two bodies formulate the longer term plans for the gardens.
Attractions for 2021 include new plantings in the two-acre rock garden, including rarities such as Rhodoleia parvipetala, a member of the witch hazel family; Athrotaxis selaginoides, also known as King William pine, an Australian native; and Dichroa febrifuga, an unusual Chinese hydrangea.
There is also a new dragonfly pond which is served by the gardens’ Rhododendron Line steam train. “One of the trust’s objects is to enhance our value for educational purposes, so this pond will do that,” says Marcus.
The insects are also good gardeners, says Lionel. “Dragonflies eat a lot of mosquitoes and are lovely to look at, so what’s not to like?”
The gardens are funded mainly by the income from their 100,000 visitors a year and took a hit on revenue in 2020. “It was a lovely spring last year but going around the gardens was a bittersweet experience because they were empty of people to enjoy it,” says Marcus.
‘What we do is nothing compared to what Tom and his team do; they deserve all the credit’
The gardens are now open (exbury.co.uk; 023 8089 1203).
The Eighth Wonder of the World – Exbury Gardens and the Rothschilds by Lionel de Rothschild and Francesca Murray Rowlins (Exbury Gardens Press, £30).