Lionel Nathan de Rothschild was the man whose inspiration created Exbury Gardens. It was his vision, his dedication and his resources which have created one of the finest woodland gardens in the country.

Lionel was born in 1882 into the famous banking family. By the mid 19th century the Rothschilds were at the peak of their financial power and prestige throughout Europe. As was expected of Lionel, he took up a career in the family bank. In 1912 he married Marie-Louise Beer by whom he had four children, Rosemary, Edmund, Naomi and Leopold.

Lionel described himself as ‘a banker by hobby, a gardener by profession’ and it was his love of flowers, particularly rhododendrons, which increasingly governed his life. It was the era of plant hunters: explorers such as Frank Kingdon-Ward, George Forrest, Joseph Rock, and Koichira Wada were bringing back seeds of hitherto unseen plants from the remoter areas of the Himalayas and South East Asia. Undoubtedly Lionel’s enthusiasm was fired by such men and their exploits.

In 1919 he bought the Exbury Estate. At this time Exbury was an isolated hamlet. William Mitford, whose family had owned the Estate in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, described it as an ‘earthly paradise’.

It had a temperate climate, moderate rainfall and an acidic soil ideal for growing rhododendrons. Armies of men were employed to clear the woodland to enable the garden to be laid out. Gradually the undergrowth of centuries was cut away and hundreds of unwanted saplings uprooted. Paths were set out and the soil enriched and prepared for Lionel’s new plantings.

A series of concrete lined ornamental ponds were built. Lionel was a perfectionist and nothing was left to chance. A borehole was sunk and an irrigation system spread out from his large red brick water tower to reach all parts of the garden through some 22 miles of underground piping; unique in its time, it is still used today and proves invaluable in long dry summers. Some two acres of greenhouses were erected, built with the finest specially imported teak. He stopped at nothing to create the gardens he wanted. No expense was spared — if this garden were to be re-created today it would cost many millions of pounds.

The onset of war in 1939 brought the development to a standstill. In 1942 Lionel died; later that year, with the family given only 48 hours to clear it, Exbury House was requisitioned by the Royal Navy and commissioned as HMS Mastodon. As such she, (though she was also called H.M.S. King Alfred and H.M.S. Hawke at different times, and she, for all ships are traditionally called she), was responsible for the administration of the victualling, arming and training of the crews of many of the types of landing craft that were used in the amphibious assaults against occupied Europe.

The author Neville Shute was one of the many service personnel who passed through during the War; he wrote about his experiences in his novel ‘Requiem For A Wren’. In it one of his fictional heroines shoots down a German bomber. Even today, mystery surrounds the true circumstances of the flight of the Junkers Ju 188 E-1 that was shot down over Exbury on the morning of 17th April 1944, crashing on the Park in front of Exbury House. Its crew of seven did not survive the crash.

What is known is that it flew over some of the preparations for the D-day invasion and, had it escaped back to its base this massive build up of ships, material and the ‘Mulberry’ sections would have been reported directly to Hitler.

From this the German Intelligence services would, almost certainly, have deduced that Operation ‘Fortitude’, the phoney plan created by the Allies to persuade the Nazis that the invasion of France would be via the Pas de Calais, was in fact a deception. The outcome of the invasion could then have been seriously jeopardised and the Allies driven back into the sea. The history of Europe might well have been different had this plane not been brought down when it was.

During this time Lionel’s widow, ‘Mrs. Lionel’, and a skeleton staff of four pensioners worked tirelessly to ensure that at least some of her husband’s work survived until Edmund returned home after the war. He then began the enormous task of restoring the gardens to their former glory.

He continued his father’s work by cultivating new parts of the garden and raising new Exbury hybrids. Edmund’s sons Nicholas and Lionel also share in the family passion for gardening on a grand scale.