Biddulph Grange Garden is a Victorian garden owned by the National Trust and open to the public. The house is privately owned and has been converted into apartments.
A stumpery.
"A garden feature similar to a rockery but made from parts of dead trees. This can take the form of whole stumps, logs, pieces of bark or even worked timber such as railway sleepers or floorboards. The pieces are arranged artistically and plants, typically ferns, mosses and lichens are encouraged to grow around or on them. They provide a feature for the garden and a habitat for several types of wildlife. The first stumpery was built in 1856 at Biddulph Grange and they remained popular in Victorian Britain.
A stumpery traditionally consists of tree stumps arranged upside-down or on their sides to show the root structure" Source Wikipedia: (
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Biddulph Grange Garden was created by James Bateman for his collection of plants from around the world.
The garden features collections of rhododendrons, summer bedding displays, a stunning Dahlia Walk in late summer and the oldest surviving golden larch in Britain, brought from China in the 1850s.
"The Grade 1 listed garden (
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has been restored to its Victorian heyday using contemporary descriptions and plans supported by archaeological evidence - the aim being to restore it as closely as possible to James Bateman’s original vision. The main source of inspiration and guidance for the restoration is an 1862 description of the gardens by Edward Kemp. First published in the Gardeners Chronicle, it is the only detailed contemporary description of the garden and grounds.
The garden is laid out so that the visitor is led from one area to another in a journey of discovery and exploration. Each garden is separated by hedges, banks and rockwork. Paths, steps and tunnels lead from one to area to another, resulting in an intriguing journey of discovery, from Italy to the pyramids of Egypt, a Victorian vision of China and a re-creation of a Himalayan glen.
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"Biddulph Grange’s stumpery consists of a sunken path bordered by upside-down oak tree roots amongst which grow a great variety of ferns, delicate plants and mosses.
The stumps are packed close together, interlacing each other and reaching up to three or four metres. The path wriggles along between them, up and down, and in some places the stumps merge overhead to form a tunnel. It is, in a sense, a rockery made of wood.
The stumpery was not meant to be a wooden work of art ornamented by a few small flowers and ferns, but as a scaffold for vigorously sprawling plants like cotoneaster and Virginia creeper which could haul themselves up into the surrounding trees. It was an early form of ‘wild gardening’.
Stumperies have sometimes been described as Victorian horticultural oddities. They became features of 19th-century gardens, perhaps because of the popularity of ferns as garden plants at a time when hundreds of new species were introduced to Britain from around the world.
The stumpery at Biddulph Grange was designed in 1856 by James Bateman and the artist and gardener, Edward William Cooke. It was the first to be built anywhere and went on to be widely copied in many Victorian gardens and, more recently, in the woods of Highgrove, Prince Charles’ home in Gloucestershire." Source: (
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The stumpery can be seen on the following YouTube link: (
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