Bowood Woodland Gardens

About the garden

Owned by The Marquis of Lansdowne, the Bowood Woodland Garden spans over 30 acres and surrounds the family mausoleum – one of Robert Adam’s finest classical buildings, commissioned in 1761 by the widow of the first Earl of Shelburne.

Within the Woodland Gardens lies the Jubilee Garden, a four-acre section of planting originally laid out around 1854 by the third Marquess of Lansdowne. Maintaining this family tradition, the latest addition to the Rhododendron Walks has been a 12-year labour of love for the present Marquis, who started planting in the woodland in 2006.

Recently, more than 30 original hardy hybrids, once thought to be extinct, were identified in the Woodland Gardens. The plants date back to to the initial planting of the garden by the third Marquis of Lansdowne in 1854. Later, the gardens were significantly expanded by the present Marquis’s great-grandfather.