Bicton Park Botanical Gardens

About

At Bicton you can enjoy over 60 acres of beautiful gardens with their soft sweeping lawns, elegant water features, fragrant English borders and formal gardens, plus a breadth of activities, interests and facilities for the enjoyment of all the family. These include indoor and outdoor childrens activity play areas, Bicton Woodland Railway, Nuthatch Nature Trail, historic glasshouses, Countryside Museum, Garden Centre, Restaurant and Gift Shop.

Steeped in history the magnificent Palm House is one of the world’s most beautiful garden buildings. Dating from c.1825 the Bicton building is about 20 years older than the Palm House at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and has a fantastic collection of palms. Remarkably for such a bulbous building, the Palm House is glazed entirely with flat glass. The small size of the 18,000 overlapping panes enables them to fit smoothly between the curved, thin iron bars that form the roof’s skeleton. The structure is strengthened by slender cast-iron columns in the side wings, but the larger central dome is self-supporting.

You can also discover the temperate and tropical houses, the little house of shells, the romantic Hermitage, the secret garden, the lake, streams and woodlands.

The Bicton Woodland Railway* is a great way to see the park, the 25 minute tour taking you through the majestic trees in the Pinetum and up to the 19th century Hermitage summerhouse at the end of the Gardens before returning alongside the lake. The Woodland Railway was conceived in the early 1960s as an additional attraction within the gardens, that were being prepared for public display. For nearly 40 years, BWR relied on veteran locomotives, including one built during the First World War, to provide an increasingly popular service. The new millennium brought the arrival of Bicton’s first brand-new train, specially designed for what is now one of only two 18-inch gauge leisure lines in the country.

The Countryside Museum is well worth seeing featuring a huge collection of exhibits that mirror the changes to village life, farming, horticulture, social history and rural crafts during the first half of the 20th century. The museum includes one of the most comprehensive displays of traction engines, steam engines and steam rollers in the country including this six tonne Babcock & Wilcox steam roller from 1926. A few steam rollers were still being used for road maintenance in the early 1970s, and this may go some way to explaining why diesel-powered rollers are still colloquially known as steam rollers to this day.

Although Bicton’s existence is due to its rich botanical heritage, which alone attracts visitors in tens of thousands from all over the UK and beyond, it also offers a diversity of activities and interests for all ages right throughout the year. The park has plenty for children too. There’s a miniature village, childrens undercover farmyard, a large climbing camp, mini golf, a children’s football pitch and *heated indoor play centre.

Bicton host many events throughout the year including our annual Fathers Day vintage weekend, Summer Picnic concerts and Christmas specials plus many others as per our events calendar.

Visitors can also relax and enjoy a meal or snack at the Orangery Restaurant with its breath taking views across the gardens.

You can take in all the above at Bicton Park Botanical Gardens as a day visitor but those able to visit more than once per year can benefit from upgrading to an annual membership for only £9 per person, including free entry to Morwellham Quay. Membership provides unlimited access to Bicton and Morwellham 363 days per year. Members also receive a 5% discount in both gift shops and restaurants and free entry to some events.

(*extra charges apply)