Biddulph Grange British Gardens in Time

Four iconic English gardens.

Each is the product of one moment in history,

and each gives us a fascinating window into the century

in which they were made, and the people who created them.

Much more than just a history of gardening,

these are extraordinary tales of escape, social ambition,

heartbreak, downfall and disaster.

In unravelling these remarkable stories, we reach back over

the centuries, to see these four great gardens through fresh eyes

and gain a greater understanding of their real significance.

Biddulph Grange lies almost completely hidden on the edge

of moorland near the industrial heartlands of Staffordshire.

It was created over 170 years ago

and is probably the best surviving Victorian garden in the country.

This garden is like a very bizarre piece of Victorian theatre.

For me, it feels almost as if I've stepped into Alice in Wonderland.

This revolutionary

and theatrical garden was conceived by James Bateman,

a deeply religious man who devoted much of his life to its creation.

There's a mystery here,

which I would like to uncover, which is what kind of obsession drove

this wealthy, eccentric Victorian industrialist to create this

remarkable garden, which eventually would lead him to financial ruin.

Biddulph Grange is made up of several smaller individual gardens

stocked with exotic specimens

collected by the Victorian plant hunters.

These wildly different gardens are linked by subterranean tunnels

and passages,

transporting the visitor around the globe in just a few steps.

The garden caused a sensation in the world of Victorian horticulture,

and allowed its creator, James Bateman,

to rise from humble beginnings to the very top of society.

Gardens like this really would have been classified

by the educated classes as being really a bit of horticultural bling.

But this Victorian masterpiece was nearly wiped from history.

This is a garden that came within a moment of being lost for ever,

and only brought back to life at the very last minute.

To find out more about the character who created Biddulph Grange,

historian Andrea Wulf has been delving into Bateman's past.

James Bateman comes from a family of industrialists,

part of the new middle classes.

They have a lot of money but he's not a nobleman.

James Bateman descended from a long line of entrepreneurs with flair

and determination, characteristics that would stand him in good stead.

His grandfather had invested very wisely in an emerging technology -

steam engines - which made the family a fortune.

Initially, Biddulph Grange had been purchased

so the family could extend their business interests

and mine the huge reserves of coal around the house.

James Bateman had other ideas.

He had just turned 30

and wanted to use his vast inheritance to indulge

his passions for horticulture and the new emerging sciences.

We are in the Grand Hall of Biddulph Grange and there are some

clues behind me which tell us a little bit about Victorian Britain.

So, when we look at these windows, we see on the one hand the money,

the coal mining, the Potteries,

the steelworks, and then, on the other hand,

you have the new discoveries, kind of scientific disciplines

are emerging - astronomy, chemistry and electricity,

so there are new discoveries happening,

and Britain is marching towards progress.

Great advances in horticulture also had a huge impact

on Victorian gardens.

One invention in particular revolutionised plant hunting.

The Wardian case was a simple method to ship plants across the globe,

and into the hands of passionate horticulturists like Bateman.

Garden designer Chris Beardshaw has been exploring how

technological advances helped to fuel a gardening revolution.

This very simple piece of engineering

means that we can bring into the UK plants from around the globe

in living condition, and great condition.

And, as a consequence, this became a tool for the creation

and proliferation of Victorian gardens.

Without it, British gardens just simply wouldn't have been the same.

But new scientific discoveries didn't just affect horticulture.

They were dramatically altering the Victorian's view of their world.

In particular, geology, which threatened the religious

convictions of devout Christians like Bateman.

This is James Bateman's geological gallery

in which he displayed fossils and rocks,

and he displayed them in seven bays,

which was the Bible, the genesis.

So, the religion is at the top, the science is at the bottom.

Although Bateman presented the two conflicting worlds together,

it would prove to be an uneasy compromise

that unsettled him for years to come.

What this was, this was the entrance to the garden,

so his visitors would come in, would be educated

about the latest scientific knowledge, meanwhile being reminded

that behind all this creation is still the divine architect.

And then they would enter the garden, which is almost like

they enter the Garden of Eden.

Bateman had to build his garden from scratch. Although he possessed

a keen horticultural mind, it was still a huge challenge.

The site was rocky, steep and far from ideal,

but he ventured forward in the true pioneering spirit

of the Victorian age.

One of the things which is very apparent

during the Victorian era is that anything can be solved

with technology and no problem is too great.

He terraces, he constructs,

he builds, he gouges, he moves earth.

He's not afraid of radical change to the site in order to create

the right conditions for his plants.

One area of the garden might well have been inspired

by those early excavations.

The stumpery's display of upturned oak roots expressed Bateman's

growing interest in botany.

I love the stumpery.

It's got such an atmosphere about it.

All the garden parts are very clear in their identity.

But of all of them, this is the one that has the biggest personality.

It's incredible to think that

when the land that Bateman acquired for this garden

was full of bog and redundant, geriatric trees,

this was largely what he did with them. These are the oak trees

that he ripped out of the ground to clear the garden.

The idea of turning the roots

and displaying the roots must have really delighted Bateman,

because what other opportunity does a polite, Victorian gentleman,

or lady, for that instance, have at seeing the roots of a plant?

It's a kind of modification of a rockery, really,

but using the timber that was extracted from the site.

It's pure science, but it just happens to be theatre.

Bateman's garden would be shaped by his love for horticultural

showmanship, inspired in part by his wife's family

who lived at Arley Hall in Cheshire.

The Egerton-Warburtons were gardening pioneers.

And Bateman's marriage to Maria Egerton-Warburton would prove

to be both horticulturally and socially beneficial.

She comes from a very well respected Cheshire family,

in the social class hierarchy higher than he is.

Arley Hall's crowning glory is the theatrical herbaceous border,

which was the first of its kind anywhere in the country.

Arley Hall is a hidden

and very often forgotten gem in the development of British horticulture.

The idea of combining perennial and herbaceous plants

together in a way which hadn't been seen before,

to such scale and proportion,

was something that set the horticultural world on fire.

Letters between Bateman

and his brother-in-law in which they exchanged horticultural ideas

suggest there was some friendly rivalry between the two.

At Biddulph, Bateman upstaged Arley Hall by taking his border

in a different direction. Reflecting his interests in science

and religion, he chose to build a showcase for just one plant

which, at the time, was the subject of a national craze.

The dahlia was such a wonderful example of how the Victorians

became obsessed - and obsession is certainly appropriate

in this sense - obsessed with a particular plant.

Bateman's own obsession with dahlias was serious.

He built this entire walkway packed with every variety available

in a celebration of both botanic advancement

and, as he believed, the wonders of God's creation.

The display today at Biddulph is a big attraction.

The garden team's work to get it ready starts early in the year.

In the warmth of the greenhouse, 900 dahlia cuttings are potted on.

This job falls to one of the garden team, Bob, who started working

at Biddulph Grange when he left school 35 years ago.

All the plants that go in the garden have to be

in the era of the Victorian times.

We can't just plant anything what we like.

Over 40 different varieties will be planted out in the Dahlia Walk.

In Bateman's day, dozens of gardeners were employed,

but today it's just a team of five,

including the garden manager, Paul Walton.

That's it, brilliant, that is, yeah.

It's one of the show gardens at Biddulph.

We have all the team in, we're planting 900 dahlias,

nine individual bays.

It's a huge team effort. I say it's one of the best displays

you'll see in any garden in the country.

James Bateman would've wowed in the Dahlia Walk.

He was in love with these flowers, so he would show them off

to their best potential.

I'm sure he'd have done a better job than us, to be honest.

The dahlia wasn't just admired for its flowers.

It also became fashionable in parts of Europe

for an entirely different reason.

The plant itself is a peculiar beast. It grows from tubas.

In South America, the South American tribes

ate them at tribal feasts

and it was the tuba itself that was eaten in just

the same way that we eat a potato, and the Spanish opted for the dahlia

as an edible crop. In fact, in many parts of Spain today you still see

recipes for dahlia-related products - dahlia bread and dahlia pastries.

Dahlias are great examples of horticultural bling,

but that bling is largely man-made. At least, it's bred into the plants.

The Victorians exploited the dahlia's potential

for cultivation, which was almost limitless due the plant's structure.

So, if we look at a flower like this

and think of it as being a single bloom,

in the centre here we have many, many hundreds

individual flowers which are petal-less,

and that means that there's not only great nectar and pollen

for insects, but also many blooms means many opportunities to breed.

Whilst Bateman embraced the cultivation of plants

of a similar species, his strongly held religious beliefs meant

he abhorred the cross breeding of plants of differing species.

Hybrids were the genetic engineering of their day

and had no place in his garden.

Bateman envisaged his garden as a way to display

the treasures of nature.

It was a vision that inspired him

to create one of the most significant pinetums in the country.

I think the professionals that were writing about gardens

during Bateman's time at Biddulph would have said that it was

THE pinetum to visit in the country at the time.

Alan Power is head gardener at Stourhead.

He has an unquenchable passion for trees

and he's come to Biddulph to find out

just why Bateman's pinetum stood apart from others.

He's being shown around by one of the garden team, Leslie Hurst.

So, this is Bateman at his best.

This is one of his eccentricities. This is a sudden change

so you're in a completely different part of the world,

you've got different architecture.

-So you've got no idea what's round the corner?

-No.

There's a real sense of excitement.

You're funnelled through a narrow little tunnel,

and then you come out to this view.

Oh, look at that! It's just fantastic.

This is his next little surprise, is the pinetum.

Bateman's pinetum was inspired by the wealth of new species

being introduced from the Americas.

One star of the show he chose to give pride of place

was the Chilean pine, more commonly known as the monkey puzzle.

This is really interesting, this mound planting effect that

Bateman did, isn't it?

You know, he just wanted to do justice to these exotic...

He wants to show it off, it's something so unusual,

so precious that it's been given real good treatment,

and now it's sitting there as a prime example.

You can't walk past and not see it, you can't ignore it.

You want to get right around it and make sure you don't miss anything.

In the early 1840s, plant hunter William Lobb

collected 3,000 monkey puzzle seeds

on an expedition to the southern Andes in Chile.

Bateman was among the first to get hold of these new introductions.

This isn't just any old monkey puzzle,

this is one of Lobb's seeds and this is where, I suppose,

I get tickled inside that I can travel through

William Lobb's experience looking at and touching this tree.

This is James Bateman's dream, this is his ideal tree,

and he must've been so proud of them

although, obviously, he didn't see them at this size.

This highly unusual tree was to be the star attraction

in Bateman's collection.

There's a bit of this monkey puzzle here.

You know, what is that all about?

In Victorian times,

it must've been a real novelty to see this thing growing.

It's curious, it's unusual, it's properly exotic.

So the excitement Bateman must have been feeling

would have been something else.

Bateman exhibited his new specimens in a unique fashion,

making his pinetum one of the most unusual

and highly regarded in the country.

This is great, isn't it? This really is what Bateman wanted to see.

-Yeah.

-You know, this whole tree,

and you're not just seeing it come straight out

of the ground but you're actually seeing the anchors of the tree.

You can see the root system.

He had a thing about roots. He loved the whole of the tree,

not just the leaf, or the form, he loved everything about it.

-The whole thing, top to bottom.

-Yeah.

The more time I spend admiring Bateman's trees at Biddulph,

the more I feel as if I'm getting to know Bateman, you know,

and getting to know a bit about himself as a horticulturalist,

as a curious scientist.

And he's displaying these trees at Biddulph like little museum pieces.

James Bateman's fascination with botany started at an early age.

When he was just eight, he became fixated with a plant that

would change his life - the orchid.

Bateman was clearly obsessive about many areas of his garden -

the Dahlia Walk, the stumpery, the ferns collection,

the pinetums. Orchids fitted perfectly into that obsessive streak

that he undoubtedly had because there were so many to collect

and because they were such complex and little understood organisms.

You know, what else is going to deliver that diversity, the range,

the beauty, the rarity, but also satisfy that scientific craving?

While he was studying at Oxford University, Bateman used his

wealth to pay others to risk life and limb collecting orchids for him.

Such was the strength of his love affair with orchids

that he wrote an entire book devoted to them.

But this is no ordinary book.

It's the largest botanical book ever produced and extremely rare.

Only 125 copies were printed,

and this one is held at the Lindley Library in London.

Its publication set the horticultural world alight,

establishing Bateman as a leading botanist

and bringing him international fame.

Here at Biddulph, they have a copy of Bateman's book -

The Orchidacea of Mexico and Guatemala.

The original is, of course, held in Lindley Library,

but this one, albeit slightly smaller, is no less spectacular.

It's a beautiful, beautiful piece of work,

both in text and also in its illustrations.

I mean, they are just the most beautiful pieces of work.

The level of detail, the botanic detail is unrivalled,

I mean, it really is breathtaking.

Someone who understands where a passion for orchids can lead

is modern day plant hunter, Tom Hart Dyke.

Here we have an exquisite orchid. It was the first orchid

I was ever given at the age of six or seven by my inspirational granny.

It's a naturally occurring hybrid called the Common Spotted Orchid,

or Southern Marsh Orchid cross.

Very exotic, and it's a naturally occurring orchid.

James Bateman and his superb illustrations that were produced

in the 1830s, '40s, inspired me to go abroad to see orchids

in the wild, in particular a place that he was fascinated by -

Central America.

Tom Hart Dyke followed in the very footsteps

of Bateman's plant hunters,

travelling the globe to find new orchids.

Going down these steep bits is quite a...whoa!

There I was, seeing plants in the wild that these people would

have seen back in the pre-Victorian era in some cases.

There's something about an orchid, they are just exquisite.

But his obsession took Tom on one trip into a remote and dangerous

part of the Columbian jungle, which nearly cost him his life.

He was kidnapped by local guerrillas and held captive for nine months.

His family never expected to see him again.

Through orchids, I got into this situation.

We went on these armed orchid patrols -

James Bateman would've been proud - going into these amazing areas

of cloud forest and, I'm not recommending it,

but after being kidnapped I saw some absolute belters, orchids.

There were new species just literally

dripping from the tress, you couldn't see

the trees for the orchids and they were just absolutely fantastic.

It was just horticultural heaven.

After nine months, Tom's kidnappers realised he was no threat

but was simply an obsessive orchid collector and so released him.

To this day, he's kept the one memento from his fateful trip

which kept him sane during his captivity,

and he has James Bateman to thank for it.

And what I've got here... Well, I don't often show this, I have to say.

This golden bag is full of Columbian, Panamanian

kidnap paraphernalia and, at the top of it,

the absolute star of the show,

my little James Bateman address book with illustrations

inspired from the most, I think, famous botanical book ever produced.

Look at those illustrations.

God, you smell the Columbian air getting up your nose.

Fetid heat of the tropical rainforest,

it's extraordinarily, extraordinarily emotional.

To some people, just a couple of illustrations of orchids.

To me, a life-changing experience having this book.

I haven't read this since being captive 13 years ago.

And to think that this little book in the times of sheer hell,

to be honest with you, sheer darkness,

seeing this inspired me to stay sane

and to think about the positive botanical delights in life,

rather than a big M-16 by the temple of your head.

In a very strange way, Mr James Bateman, basically,

however indirectly it might be, saved my life.

James Bateman's book was the talk of the horticultural world.

Orchid collectors at the very top of Victorian society

were falling over themselves to get a copy.

When you read the list of subscribers that Bateman

puts at the front of the book, it's in descending hierarchical order,

which is fascinating. So, you've got the Duke of Bedford,

the Duke of Devonshire, the Duke of Marlborough, the Duke of Northumberland...

It is the who's who of anyone in horticulture.

This gives him licence to knock on the door of the great

and the good in the world of gardens and gardening

and say, "You know who I am."

Bateman's acceptance by the horticultural elite gave him

an entree to the very highest echelons of Victorian society.

I think James Bateman is a very confident young man.

He writes a letter in February 1835, when he's just 23 years old,

to the 6th Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth.

It's beautifully written because he wants to make a very good impression.

This is one of the wealthiest landowners

in the whole of the country, and he writes to him and he says,

"It is possible that my name may not be altogether unknown to you."

So, he's expecting the Duke of Devonshire to know him.

It's almost like he's using their love for plants as a way in

to this other social class that he's really not part of at all.

Chatsworth at that time in the mid-1830s is one of the most

spectacular gardens in the country.

I mean, there are gardeners going on a horticultural pilgrimage

up to Chatsworth.

James Bateman had clearly made an impression on the Duke

and they continued to exchange letters

about their shared love of orchids.

Well, he writes one letter where, I think it's really beautiful,

where he says, "Before I was so violently smitten

"with the orchids, I devoted much of my time

"to growing or attempting to grow the different tropical fruit trees."

So, he's talking... He's "violently smitten" by the orchids,

so he's talking - like so many other gardeners about his plants -

almost as if they are lovers.

So there is this... You know, they are really crazy about these plants

and that's something that transcends class.

The Duke of Devonshire's very close friendship with his head gardener,

Joseph Paxton at Chatsworth, is testament to the way

in which horticulture broke down social barriers.

Joseph Paxton would find world fame by exploiting his skills

as both a horticulturist and engineer, establishing him

as the most influential force in the world of Victorian gardening.

At Chatsworth, his crowning glory was to design the largest glass

structure to be built at that time.

Paxton called it his Great Stove.

Now, at that time, glass is quite heavily taxed,

so this is very expensive just in terms of the materials.

And it's only five years later,

in 1845, that the glass tax gets repealed.

So it's this extraordinary moment when the glasshouse is finished

when they have to fill it, and gardeners like Bateman

are very happy to offer some of their plants for this.

Paxton exploited all the latest Victorian advances in technology

to construct his Great Stove.

It was revolutionary.

He's said to have been particularly inspired

by the construction of the regal lily,

the water lily that comes from the Amazonian forests,

the pad of which is several feet across.

In fact, he was so convinced by the structural stability of the pad,

he stood his own daughter on it to prove that

floating on the surface of the water,

this single leaf could support the weight of a child.

And it was the veining on the underside of the leaf that

Paxton was particularly interested in because that gave him

the inspiration for some of his greatest

architectural glass constructions.

This revolution in glass technology triggered a new

craze for using tender bedding plants to great effect,

as at Waddesdon Manor, the creation of Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild.

One of the things that became really fashionable is the idea

of using plants in the same way

as one would use a thread in a tapestry.

So, carpet bedding.

And carpet is where we really are inspired by,

in terms of horticultural planting,

because it's about taking vibrant textures and tones through,

and weaving them together into the most flamboyant

of horticultural fabrics.

Like Bateman, Rothschild spent prodigiously on his garden

as a means of displaying his wealth and status.

Waddesdon Manor is a fantastic example of the way in which

bedding becomes almost ridiculous with this sort of extravagance

and approach of producing hundreds and thousands of plants,

not just propagated but then planted out and very carefully tended.

And, of course, any bedding is only very,

very temporary by its nature.

It's an exotic plant that's not hardy,

and therefore the period interest is really rather short,

so the investment in labour

and the investment in plant material is really quite extraordinary.

So it is only the moneyed classes who can really afford

this rather radical approach to horticulture.

Bateman's botanical tastes were more rarefied than Rothschild's,

but he still had ambitions to put Biddulph on the horticultural map.

The catalyst for this was meeting Edward Cooke,

a man of considerable talents,

which Bateman was able to deploy to great effect in his garden.

Edward Cooke was a successful painter and gardener.

His natural flair as a landscape designer would transform Biddulph

and make it the most unique garden of its age.

I think that's why Biddulph feels so confident as a garden,

because it isn't just one man's wild and childlike imagination.

It's grounded with the foundation of design and horticulture,

and that must surely have been inspired by Cooke.

But one momentous event in Victorian history would be a huge inspiration

for Bateman and his designer, Cooke -

The Great Exhibition of 1851.

Chatsworth's head gardener, Joseph Paxton, achieved world fame

and a knighthood when he was chosen to design and build

the largest glass structure on earth, The Crystal Palace.

It took 2,000 men eight months to build.

When the Great Exhibition happens, that's really the moment

when Britain is showing to the world we are the workshop of the world,

we can produce all these things,

we are better than the rest of the world.

James Bateman was among the 6 million visitors.

He was accompanied by his friend, Edward Cooke,

who recorded these visits in his personal diary.

This diary gives us glimpses of how they worked together here,

but also what kind of stuff they did.

So, for example, I've found one entry where Cooke and Bateman

go together to the Great Exhibition in London, and this is what is says.

"Mr Bateman called early and I went with him to gardens

"in Great Exhibition. Home at 12, very cold east wind."

Always mentioning the weather, very important.

Then, a few days later, they go again, and it says,

"Mr Bateman called.

"I met him at the Great Exhibition at five. Saw Egypt".

Now those two words, "Saw Egypt,"

they tell us a lot about a particular part in this garden.

What I think really must have blown them completely away

was the Egyptian court at the Great Exhibition.

So you had this huge space in the Crystal Palace,

which was dedicated to Egypt, and when you look at pictures

of it now, you see dozens and dozens of those guys,

huge, sitting exactly this way, lined up one after another.

And they went there to see that, and you can see how they take that

journey from the Great Exhibition and bring it into the garden here.

The whole Exhibition was one big build up to show the world

how great Britain is and, in a way, that's what Bateman is doing here.

One of the delightful things about Bateman's work is that

you're transported from one region of the world to another,

almost in the flick of an eye.

Victorian England was fascinated by Egypt,

but more ambitious explorations to the exotic East

stimulated Bateman and Cooke to even higher levels of creative endeavour.

This part of the garden would be the most acclaimed

and confirm Biddulph as one of the wonders of the Victorian age.

I think it's the most wonderful piece of theatre, I really do.

And what's really impressive is,

every time you come through, you're surprised.

As the season changes and you see different highlights,

as the sunlight catches the different trees,

you know, different areas of the garden become enlivened.

It's just beautiful.

The Chinese garden was hugely exotic for the Victorian visitors.

Its appeal and dramatic effect transported them

to a world few, if any, would get the chance to see.

China is incredibly important in the history of horticulture in the UK.

Horticulturalists and gardeners were very keen to send explorers in

to discover the riches of horticulture

that lay in this vast country.

An example of a plant hunter

who's particularly relevant to this garden is Robert Fortune,

a dour and miserable, somewhat humourless Scot, some described him as,

who was despatched off to China on several occasions.

And he is responsible for supplying at least one plant

directly from China into Bateman's collection -

a wonderful golden larix,

which is one of three that came in as part of an expedition,

and the other two failed.

The one here in Biddulph is still thriving.

But Bateman never travelled further than Europe.

In fact, his Chinese garden

was inspired by something far closer to home,

in Stoke on Trent,

which at the time was the beating heart

of the British pottery industry.

This is the inspiration for China here in Biddulph.

And it's a plate, produced by Spode,

which was a local pottery, and it's their most popular pattern.

And what you can see here is you can see a Chinese scene,

you can see a willow tree, you can see a Chinese temple,

you can see a Chinese boat, a Chinese bridge, a Chinese fence,

and it's almost like as if he took this plate

into his garden and tried to recreate exactly this.

The British fascination for all things Chinese

wasn't just down to the wealth of new introductions for the garden.

Big business had its eye on the Far East, too.

Robert Fortune was employed by the East India Trading Company

to penetrate into the depths of China and bring out the secret of tea.

Tea was being held within China.

The plants, the most sacred plants weren't allowed to cross the borders,

and the British, particularly, were very keen to gain access

because tea was gaining in popularity.

Robert Fortune ventured in on his second expedition in China in 1842,

and he went armed, rather bizarrely,

with an English-Chinese dictionary,

a gun, some rather rudimentary horticultural tools,

and a Chinese wig and a cloak.

He got himself in to the most sacred gardens,

to the best plantations of tea and managed to steal cuttings.

And it's said that he brought live plant material

tucked in his cloak across the border into India,

and it broke the stranglehold of China on tea.

Bateman succeeded in bringing the world into his garden,

despite never travelling to these exotic locations himself.

It was Cooke's skilful designs that would transport the visitor

to different parts of the globe.

In this case, the Himalayan glen.

One of the lovely things about this glen area and the upper glen beyond

is just how realistic it is.

I mean, this is about displaying ferns, you know,

in the way that ferns grow.

And there's no doubt Cooke's genius in assembling the rocks,

so he understood, clearly, the geology and the formation,

the way that the layers were working, you know.

It's just a fabulous piece of work, very convincing as a piece of work.

This upper glen area has been opened up

and restocked with plants that were all the rage in Victorian times.

Ferns.

I would like it as close here as we can so when you walk under here

I'd like just that canopy and the leaves coming over

so you're actually walking under a bit of an archway here, yeah?

And also they get a bit close

where they can almost touch it, as well.

Lovely. Cheers. I'll catch you in a bit.

For gardener manager Paul,

this project has been a personal ambition.

We're currently restoring this area.

We try and keep it in with the spirit of the place.

We haven't got a lot of history about some of the things,

but we do know that ferns were in this area.

Yeah, I think we'll have it back here,

cos then you will see it from down there

and it'll sort of tail down either side of the rock.

This top area's never, ever been open to the public

and we're looking to plant it up with ferns,

get the bridge replaced, and it'll be a nice addition to the garden.

And you've got some spectacular views across to the lily pond,

and also you do get a glimpse of the Chinese garden, which is nice.

James Bateman kept few records or plant lists,

but the team at Biddulph have one key piece of reference,

written in 1862, which has given them some vital clues.

We've got some tree ferns.

We are going to be placing one of the tree ferns here.

We've put one in there, which creates a nice canopy...

Volunteer Elaine Laws and Paul have been trying to match up

Bateman's original varieties with any that are still available today.

Of these, have you managed to source any of these?

We have. What we have found out is some of those names

-are old Victorian names...

-Right, yeah, of course.

..so we've had to find out the modern equivalent.

That's brilliant. Shall we go walk up...?

Fern collecting became a Victorian craze,

and James Bateman was no exception,

encouraged by Edward Cooke, who was fixated with them.

The fern is a curious creature because it is acceptable

in Victorian society for women to be engaged in the propagation

and collection of ferns, and also the depiction of ferns

within artistry and embroidery and tapestries.

The fern is seen as a very polite plant.

It's a plant which is appropriate for proper ladies to be involved with

because the fern doesn't display any overt sexual function.

The absence of flowers and sexual reproduction,

which is obvious to the human eye, is something which is considered

appropriate for ladies to be involved with.

Ferns are perfect.

Bateman's garden had consumed a vast amount of his wealth,

but he continued to expand and develop new areas

which he stocked with the latest and most extravagant introductions.

What a CV these trees have.

You know, they're said to be the oldest, largest,

heaviest living organisms on the planet.

Bateman was one of the first in Britain to get hold of seeds

from a tree which at the time was the talk of the horticultural world.

He chose to show them off in a grand avenue.

You couldn't really stand anywhere more appropriate

and get a real sense of the Victorian era of gardening.

This is spectacular, really exciting.

I know them as the giant sequoias.

They are gigantic, and they are sequoias.

They're also known as Wellingtonias.

That name came about, really, because,

if you send a plant hunter from Britain to America

to discover and to bring back seed from the biggest, best,

greatest tree that stories have been told about,

you're going to want to give it an everlasting name.

So it was named after the Duke of Wellington.

But in America it's commonly known as the Washingtonia.

They were over £2 a seed, you know, back in the 1850s.

That's expensive.

And he bought enough seed to plant an avenue.

It's a real statement of wealth.

I'm just really grateful that this is what

he chose to put his money into.

I mean, the Victorians threw their money at industry,

at engineering, all kinds of things,

but we're incredibly lucky that Bateman had a passion for plants.

But these precious trees never reached full maturity.

Tragically, they were felled by the next owner of Biddulph Grange.

In 1990, the National Trust decided to restore

the Wellingtonia Avenue to Bateman's original designs.

They've been planted here by the Trust now for nearly 20 years,

I suppose, and they're just starting to get away and in my lifetime,

fingers crossed, I'll come back and see them two or three times again.

And they will achieve 80, 90, 100 feet.

And I want to sit at the bottom of one of these trees and just look up

and see it at Biddulph

and see it happy in the English landscape.

I do want to come back as an old aged pensioner

and see them twice this height.

After almost 25 years, James Bateman had achieved respect

as an accomplished horticulturist.

He'd risen up the social ranks

and become Vice President of the Royal Horticultural Society

and Biddulph received great accolades

when scrutinised by the garden critic of the day, Edward Kemp,

for a hugely respected magazine.

Edward Kemp's article in Gardeners' Chronicle -

a key journal of the day - is really the first point

at which Bateman's work becomes more broadly celebrated.

So, aside from friends and relations and invited guests,

this is the first example of somebody coming specifically

to write about it and document it

and publish it to a much broader audience,

and it signals social acceptance

because the article is actually incredibly favourable.

Bateman's achievements were only possible thanks to the extraordinary

developments in science and technology.

Yet, to Bateman, his garden was a testament

to his deeply held religious beliefs -

beliefs that were about to be tested

by one of the great scientists of the age.

This gallery was finished by 1862. This is three years after

Charles Darwin publishes his Origin Of Species,

which is the moment he presents to the world his evolutionary theory,

which is the most important book in the 19th century

and that changes everything.

And Darwin and Bateman knew each other.

Bateman sent Darwin some orchids to persuade him

they were the wonders of God's creation.

But Darwin studied them and concluded they in fact supported

his scientific theories of evolution.

So, on the one hand you have Charles Darwin

who used these orchids to find out about how orchids had adapted

to their environment and to their pollinators.

And, on the other hand, you have Bateman,

a deeply religious man who believed that plants and animals

had been created entirely for the use of mankind.

So these two really did not agree at all.

But Darwin didn't just disagree with Bateman.

He went ahead and published his theories on the evolution

of the orchid in a well-received book.

For Bateman to have come out on the losing side

in such a public squabble must have been a humiliation.

If you come to Biddulph

in the hope of learning something about its creator, Bateman,

and trying to get under the skin of the man,

you're left, I think, slightly perplexed.

It's either the work of genius

or it's the work of a man who is wrestling internally

with religion on one hand and science on the other,

both opposing.

Yet, despite his garden being hailed as a masterpiece,

Bateman had a bigger problem on the horizon.

It had cost him so much money that his debts were crippling.

So when you read through Cooke's diary,

towards the end there's an entry which reveals

a little bit to us that this might be the beginning

of the end of this garden, because on the 24th September 1869

there's an entry, which says, "Mr Bateman wrote a sad letter."

It's a letter in which he explains

why he's intending to sell Biddulph Grange.

He says, "I only wish now that I had not laid out so much money upon it."

You know, he did spend a fortune on this garden.

By that time he has a mortgage of £35,000.

In today's money that was a debt of over £1.5 million.

He has really thrown money onto this place

but he's ready to sell it.

Biddulph Grange was sold in 1872

to another wealthy Industrialist and MP, Robert Heath.

So, when they're leaving here, you can imagine it's relatively easy,

you pack your furniture, your crockery, your silver,

that's all fine, you can take that with you.

They're moving to London.

But they have to leave behind all of this.

You know, the thing that they are clearly most passionate about,

that they can't take.

So they are leaving behind China, Egypt, all their plants,

the ferns, all of that stays here.

So it must have been absolutely heartbreaking

to pack up the house and leave the garden behind.

Although the new owner's interest in gardening never matched Bateman's,

the garden was very well maintained

and the house was expensively renovated.

But then disaster struck.

The house was almost destroyed by fire.

The local fire brigade posed after the event for this photograph,

with flames painted in for effect.

The outbreak of World War I

signalled the beginning of the end for the garden.

Robert Heath's money dried up

and parts of the estate were sold off.

The house was converted into an orthopaedic hospital,

with drastic consequences for the garden.

It is actually unbelievable to realise that this entire area

was just completely covered over, it was just under the ground.

So we didn't know it was there at all.

In 1988, the National Trust took ownership of the garden,

which by now was close to ruin and in danger of being completely lost.

There's absolutely no doubt at all that we needed to save it.

Its importance, and it still is its absolute importance,

is that it is absolutely the height of high Victorian gardening.

It's probably is the only complete Victorian garden in the country.

Julian Gibbs headed up the team

that took the decision to restore the garden.

At the time, we said it was the biggest garden restoration undertaken by the Trust.

It had all been flattened, there had been hospital buildings here,

the dahlia walk had been filled in, and so on.

I mean, it was a mess. It really was a mess.

We had to get diggers in to dig it all out and then dump the soil.

I can remember the mess and the chaos here.

Finally, in 1991, the first phase of the restoration was completed

and the garden was opened to the public.

If we had lost this garden,

we would have lost one of the most important,

or perhaps THE most important, garden in garden history.

It is absolutely of its date.

It's 1849-1864.

That's when it was created and it's still here.

Wow, look at that!

I don't think I've ever seen it looking so good.

If you need to justify -

which you shouldn't really have to justify

trying to save and restore a beautiful place -

this is it.

Today, the garden is Grade I listed

and its rescue is especially valued by the Biddulph village locals.

Derek Wheelhouse was amongst those

who originally campaigned to save the garden.

He now visits almost every day to keep an eye on things.

It doesn't matter what the weather's like, it can be snowing, icy,

rain, Derek will still be here.

We can be there brushing steps off in the snow

and Derek comes round the corner.

-Good morning, Paul.

-Morning! How you doing, Derek?

-I'm all right, thank you.

-Here again.

-Very, very well.

When it comes down to what's given me the most pleasure

during my retirement,

it's the Grange garden.

I remember Paul coming here in 1992, didn't you?

-Yes, that's it. Yeah, yeah.

-Directly from school.

-We've known each other a while, haven't we?

-Oh, yes.

I use him a little bit as an advisor, really.

He sort of gives me his opinion the garden.

Sometimes we sort of work to that,

sometimes I say, "Well, we're leaving that for whatever reason."

But he wants to see Biddulph at its best all the time.

It's filled so much of my life,

I don't know what I would've done without it.

He's a good friend, a very good friend.

I'm sure if I asked Derek to come and help us

plant a few bulbs today, he'd come along.

I think I would do that in the past.

I think I've got past that stage a little bit.

THEY LAUGH

For Derek, the greatest pleasure

is seeing Biddulph Grange continue to thrive.

Today, the upper glen is to be reopened to the public

for the first time in 100 years.

It's been replanted with ferns, as it was in James Bateman's time,

together with a new walkway

being opened by the longest-serving member of the team, Bob.

The bridge is now officially open.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Bateman's garden was every bit a reflection of the Victorian age.

We can't understand who we are as a society,

we can't move forward as designers and horticulturalists

and gardeners unless we appreciate where we've come from,

what we've learnt and the experiences of our forefathers.

And that's why Biddulph plays such an important part

in that jigsaw of horticultural delights that is the British garden.

It is bold, theatrical, inventive and, above all, hugely original.

Whilst Bateman would have shuddered at the thought that his garden

was so nearly lost, its restoration has now secured its future.

It is a showpiece, it's a showman's garden.

A garden that is extrovert and introvert in equal measures.

It entertains, it delights and it poses questions.

It's a garden that really encourages you to think about what a garden is,

what part plants play in the garden,

and what part gardens play

in our understanding of the much wider world.

Next time, Nymans in Sussex.

An extraordinary story of one of the most romantic

and fashionable gardens of the Edwardian era,

which came so close to being wiped off the horticultural map.

It endured, despite the fact that almost every conceivable

disaster and challenge was thrown at it.