Visitors to Exbury Gardens get more than their money’s worth when they take a buggy ride with Jim Langford.
Jim, 83, has worked for the Rothschild family at Exbury for more than 60 years, helping to run the two farms and the dairies which were once part of the estate, working with the game shoot and giving a hand in the Gardens when needed.

And now he’s still on duty as one of Exbury’s buggy drivers, taking visitors on an entertaining and informative ride round the Gardens, telling not only about the plants and trees they’ll see on the way, but also tales about life at Exbury over more than half a century.

Jim was 22, just out of the Army and newly-wed, when he started working on Lepe and East Hill farms, both part of the Exbury Estate. He and his late wife, Sheila, settled in a cottage at Lepe and soon Sheila became housekeeper to the newly-married Edmund de Rothschild and his first wife, Elizabeth.

Exbury Gardens, not then open to the public, had become overgrown during the war and Jim was one of many who worked to get them back into shape.
“The lawn on the south side of the house, where there are wonderful views across the Solent, had grown so long that I went to cut it back using the old tractor,” he recalls. “They did tell me to ‘mind the wall’ but as I didn’t see any wall I just went ahead – until the tractor, with me on board, toppled over the edge of the ha-ha which the grass had disguised.”

A row of trophies and cups on Jim’s sideboard at home is proof that his tractor handling skills improved dramatically as he worked at the two farms and regularly swept the board at local ploughing matches.
“There were many workers here in those days and we all helped where we were needed. I remember cutting wood and piling it into large baskets which we took to London in a lorry to the Rothschild Bank. I also remember helping to unload lorries at Exbury House and carrying cases of Rothschild wine down to the family cellars,” he said.

Jim knows the 200 acre woodland gardens back to front. He’ll tell his buggy passengers stories of the naming of different parts of Exbury, including Witcher’s Wood, so-called because, way back in the 1920s, Lionel de Rothschild discovered it was the haunt of a family of charcoal burners, called Witcher. They carried out their charcoal-burning there for many years.

Jim drives slowly down the winding paths, naming the rhododendrons and azaleas bred over the generations – and then remembering many of the people after whom they are named. Royalty and celebrities alike have visited Exbury, often as guests of the hospitable Rothschilds in the days when house parties were the norm, and Jim has met most of them.
“Those where the times when the chauffeur would turn up at the dairy every week with a ‘shopping list’ for the kitchen. Milk, cream, eggs, fruit, vegetables and meat for the family and their guests were all sent up to the house,” he said.

Visitors to Exbury still enjoy lunch or tea in the Gardens and Jim is still indirectly involved – his two grandsons Paul and Mark Mortimer’s catering company, Amuse Bouche, supply the sandwiches to Mr Eddy’s Restaurant, carrying on the family connection.

When Jim started work at Exbury, Edmund de Rothschild (Mr Eddy) had returned from the war to play a major part in running the family bank – and restoring the Gardens which were first opened to the public in 1955.
Jim remembers Mr Eddy arriving home on a Friday evening, keen to know everything that had happened during the week in the Gardens and on the estate.
“He would come straight to the grain drier, still wearing his posh London suit and shout for me. If I was busy in the grain bins, I’d tell him so and he would run up the ladder, even climb in the bin – never mind the suit – and help until the job was done and I could tell him what he wanted to know.”

Mr Eddy had recently become head of the family when young Jim started working at Exbury and, sadly, he died in 2009, just after his 93rd birthday. But Exbury continues to flourish and, with Jim at the wheel of a visitor buggy, starting his 61st season when the Gardens re-open on Saturday March 13th, the history of Exbury stays very much alive.

Exbury Gardens open daily between Saturday March 13th and Sun November 7th.