Join Sky Arts and the National Trust as we take a journey around the country and across the centuries to discover Britain's most beautiful landscape and pleasure gardens. With unprecedented access to the Trust's properties and exclusive insights into the gardens' original designs and plans, this five-part series brings to life the stories behind each remarkable garden and the people who designed and built them.

Biddulph Grange is a 19th Century high Victorian garden that pays tribute to the exploration and eccentricity of the age. An accomplished horticulturist and orchid expert, James Bateman developed Biddulph Grange in Staffordshire after inheriting the property from his industrialist father around 1840, and designed the garden to display specimens from his extensive, world-ranging plant collection.

The highly unusual garden takes visitors on a journey of discovery around the world, through a series of themed gardens. Tunnels and pathways meander past stone sculptures and Victorian oddities such as upside down trees; the Egyptian court features stone sphinxes and topiary pyramids; the unique oriental pagoda garden comes complete with its own Great Wall of China; Italian formal terraces evoke fin-de-siècle Florence, while the Dahlia Walk is a riot of colour set against stern architectural lines.


Inspired to get out into the garden?
The Sky Arts Music Service has a garden-inspired playlist, featuring classical tracks such as Rimsky-Korsakov's The Flight of the Bumble-Bee and Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending all ready for you to jump on your ride-on mower or prune your window box with. Just click here to listen.