Burnby Hall Gardens & Museum

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Burnby Hall Gardens & Museum, North Yorkshire
Following is quote from web site

[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Adventurer, scholar and traveller, Major Percy Stewart began sowing the seeds of the garden that is Burnby Hall Gardens today when he and his wife Katharine took up residence in Burnby Hall in 1904.

Born in 1871 at Stukely Rectory in Huntingdonshire, Major Stewart, Godson of the Duke of Marlborough, and expert with rod and rifle, initially set about carving out the two lakes to provide private trout fishing for himself and his friends. After travelling around the world seven times and becoming something of a real life Indiana Jones, he became more interested in his home and planted a small collection of water lilies to beautify his trout lakes. With great encouragement from his wife, he finally ceased hunting for big game in favour of pursuing different species of water lilies to add to his collection.

At the age of 55, Major Stewart gave up travelling altogether and settled at Burnby Hall. In 1948, nine years after the death of his wife, Major Stewarl moved out of Burnby Hall to live in a cottage in the grounds. He died in 1962 at the grand old age of ninety and was buried beside his wife in the leafy churchyard of the nearby village of Hayton.
Major Stewart left the gardens in a trust for the benefit of the people of Pocklington and around. The Stewart's Burnby Hall Gardens & Museum Trust took over the management of the estate.

The gardens were opened to the public in 1964 with the opening of the museum four years later.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]With more than eighty varieties of water lilies, the upper and lower lakes are recognised internationally as home to the biggest collection of hardy water lilies found in a natural setting anywhere in Europe.

Burnby Hall is one of those small gardens that can take a couple of hours to explore or just sit and picnic anywhere you like and enjoy a whole day at yout leasure.
We enjoyed our stay and maybe heading back that way later in the season when there are even more lillies on show.
enjoy my pictures of Burnby Hall Gardens.
robert

































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Very nice Robert. The water lillies are gorgeous at the moment aren't they? We saw lots of them at Mannington too.

 

Thanks for sharing. Love that natural look. So pretty.