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Please check with garden owners or their website to confirm current dates open
2nd April - 9th Oct; 7 days a week; 10am - 6pm (last admission 4.30pm)
Yes
No
No
Mid June - mid Sept
Hardy Water Lilies
Adult £4.50; Child (5-15) £2.50; Senior Citizens £3.80; Parties over 20 £3.55pp. RHS members free Apr - Jun
Season, Adult Single £21 single; £36 double;
Season, Senior Citizens Adults £26 single; £42 double;
Family £53 (couple + 3 children/grandchildren)
Guide dogs and Hearing dogs only. Brass Band concerts on 11 selected Sundays, see own website for details. Also programme of events, including Falconry Days and Children's Days
9 acres of gardens including 2 lakes Stewart Collection Museum
Hardy Water Lilies
Feathers Hotel
Yorkshire Wolds City of York
Exploring the Gardens, the visitor will meet continually changing vistas. There is the Secret Garden, designed by students from the nearby Bishop Burton College of Agriculture; the rock gardens and heather beds; the banks of lavender and juniper; the massed lrees and shrubs from all over the world; the dovecote, a reminder of more gentle days; the formal bedded areas and the wilder, natural shrubberies; the aviary and the bandstand all linked by leafy walkways and lined with rustic shelters and benches; the Victorian Garden and Primrose Wood woodland walk.
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. The lakes are also home to a vast army of ornamental f'ish that loves to be hand-fed by our visitors.
There is also a museum which provides a fascinating glimpse into the life and times of Major Stewart and his seven world tours at the beginning of the 20th century.
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.