Harewood House Houses

Harewood is a great family day out. Visit the Adventure Playground, explore the Gardens and Bird Gardens, take a boat trip across the lake or marvel at the collections in the House. With an extensive programme of events and exhibitions, Harewood offers something for all.

The garden landscape at Harewood has been intimately bound to the House from its beginning.

In 1758, as the proportions and foundations of the Palladian Country House were being laid out, the shape of the surrounding landscape was being determined by the designer Lancelot 'Capability' Brown.

Although others had enhanced the landscape before him, in particular Edwin Lascelles, Brown's interpretation of the Classical landscape with subtly altered hills and valleys, naturalistic plantings of trees and the characteristic serpentine lake form the idyllic rural setting to subsequent garden developments.

Our aim at Harewood Bird Garden is simple: to promote an understanding and awareness of birds and their environment, through conservation, exhibition and interpretation.

Harewood Bird Garden is one of the country's premier avian collections. Over a hundred species of threatened and exotic birds are housed in sympathetic environments with the aim of promoting conservation and education. The Bird Garden Guide includes a list of species currently housed here. The Bird Garden is an active member of the Federation of Zoological Gardens of Great Britain and Ireland, and participates in various captive breeding programmes.

A visit to the Bird Garden is about enjoying the beauty, splendour and diversity of the world's birds, and we hope it will make you as enthusiastic for their conservation as Lord and Lady Harewood and all the Harewood staff. We all share a commitment that means that today the Bird Garden stands as a testament to good practice in conservation in a world where hundreds of species are in serious peril.

We think that a visit to the Bird Garden will give you an appreciation of the natural world's extraordinary diversity and lead to an understanding of the conservation efforts we and other organisations are making.