Diverse planting
In 1842, just as Bateman started to create Biddulph, the Treaty of Nanking opened up China to the west and the Horticultural Society (now the Royal Horticultural Society) sent an adventurous Scotsman, Robert Fortune, to see what Chinese plants or systems of agriculture might be useful to gardens in Britain. It is to Robert Fortune that Biddulph owes many of the plants in Bateman’s China garden: 190 plants came from Fortune’s many collections, including the hardy fan palm, Trachycarpus fortunei and Spiraea japonica var fortunei.
However, Bateman’s China garden was not created exclusively with Chinese plants. It was and is home to as many plants from Japan, Britain and America too. There are Japanese cedars (Cryptomeria japonica), Sarawa cypresses (Chamaecyparis pisifera ‘Squarrosa’) and specimens of the Chinese golden larch (Pseudolarix amabilis, formerly fortunei), a deciduous conifer which Robert Fortune found in 1854, so beautiful when its leaves turn yellow in autumn; Biddulph still has one of the oldest specimens in cultivation. There is the pagoda tree, Paulownia tomentosa, remarkable for its large leaves, azaleas, bamboos, hostas, mahonias and the garden’s signature image: three huge Japanese maples.