Jane Powers discovers some unusual international influences in English country gardens.
Brash bedding plants don't have a lot of fans these days. Blocks of orange marigolds surrounded by ribbons of blue lobelia and white alyssum may bring a smile to the faces of visitors to the park, but they are pretty much frowned on by horticultural snobs. But how fashions change. A hundred and sixty years ago these clashy-dashy planting schemes were as chic as could be, symbols of status, wealth and innovative thinking. Only really well-heeled folks in stately homes could afford the heated glasshouses that were required for the mass propagation of the exotic half-hardy plants - pelargonium, gazania, fuchsia, petunia and others - newly introduced from South Africa and the Americas.
The birth of bedding schemes coincided with a renewed interest in the Italian Renaissance, and the foremost proponent of the style was the architect Charles Barry. His first "Italian" house and garden were created at Trentham Park, in Staffordshire, for the second duke of Sutherland. An earlier landscape had been designed by Lancelot "Capability" Brown, in the naturalistic manner fashionable in the 18th century. But in 1840 or so Barry swept away 10 acres of Brown's parkland in front of the house (which he also rebuilt), drained and flattened the land, and constructed a formal Italianate garden.
The two terraces were planted with bedding and embellished with urns, statues and fountains (or "water squirts", as the anti-formal-gardening advocate William Robinson denounced them). The jewel of Capability Brown's design, a mile-long, 83-acre lake, was hemmed in with balustrades by Barry. Water, like the rest of the landscape, needed to be restrained by man's controlling hand.
But Trentham Park's heyday was horribly curtailed. And ironically, it was water - and man's impact on it - that led directly to the decline of this "Versailles of the midlands". Sewage from the busy Potteries towns upstream percolated from the River Trent into the lake and fountains. Its presence was noisomely evident by the early 1870s. Thirty years later the Sutherlands left Trentham Park for good.
Most of the house was demolished in 1911, and the property passed through various incarnations, including a spell as an amusement park. Last year, however, under the ownership of St Modwen Properties and the German entrepreneur Willi Reitz, the 750-acre estate entered a €150 million regeneration scheme. Woodlands are being restored, and the now-squeaky-clean lake has become a wildlife refuge. Other attractions include a garden centre, a soon-to-open monkey forest and numerous outdoor activities.
The house will be rebuilt, to include a five-star hotel by 2008. But the restoration of the Italianate gardens is already partially complete. Barry's water squirts are once again shooting triumphally into the air, and his bedding plants are blaring their orderly fanfares of colour - at least in the upper terrace.
The lower terrace is a different matter. Barry's formal beds have been remade, but their contents would probably make the Victorian architect turn in his grave. For here are massed perennials, 70,000 of them, planted in softly interwoven, swaying drifts that have a life of their own - in direct contrast to the static flower patterns that once decorated these parterres.
The gardens' manager is Michael Walker, a Northern Irishman recruited from the National Trust's Waddesdon Manor. "The garden at Trentham has always pushed forward," he says. "It was absolutely the most trend-setting place."
So it is fitting that two of today's leading designers have been chosen to partake in the re-creation: Piet Oudolf, a pioneer of this style of perennial planting, and Tom Stuart-Smith, whose recent Chelsea Flower Show garden, based on Trentham's rebirth, was awarded a gold medal.
Many more horticultural delights are planned for this historic estate. But there is no room to describe them here, because, before leaving Staffordshire, I want to take you 14 miles up the road to another Victorian extravaganza.
The gardens at Biddulph Grange, sensitively restored a dozen years ago by the National Trust, were created at the same time as the Italian garden at Trentham, but they are as different as chalk and cheese. At Biddulph, James and Maria Bateman (both keen plantspeople), with the help of their friend Edward Cooke, made what is called a "garden of rooms" - or, in this case, a garden of countries. This was a time of discovery, travel and plant hunting - and the newly revealed riches of the world were cause for celebration and imitation.
The Batemans' collection of internationally themed spaces includes, of course, an Italian garden, but many other countries are also represented. Unlike at Trentham, where the land had been flattened, at Biddulph the grounds are artificially moulded into mounds and miniature valleys.
Each garden is enclosed by hedges, rockwork, earth banks or dense planting, with its own distinct microclimate. "Italy" - with the requisite, ribbon planting of half-hardy annuals - is in a sheltered concavity, Mediterranean hot in the midday sun. Visitors pass through its columns of Irish juniper (which mimic Italian cypresses) and soon find themselves in the American garden, with its acid soil, placid lake and candy-coloured rhododendrons.
A little further on, plantings of bamboos, more rhododendrons and massive boulders recall the Himalayas; a Scottish glen is right next door. The glen's beautiful and naturalistic rock formations, designed by Edward Cooke, make a cool setting for ferns, hostas and marsh marigolds.
The next part of this engagingly eccentric journey across the globe is not for those who dislike cramped spaces. But, fellow claustrophobics, it is worth clenching your fists, breathing deeply and hurling yourself through the narrow tunnel whose black entrance looms malignly ahead.
After three seconds in this dark passage grave the light hits you, and you are reborn. Into a red and green and gold and shining China: a land of red-leaved maples, red-lacquered woodwork, weeping larch, gold-leaf effigies and a glassy pool populated with radiant koi. Jingly little temple bells await the ping of your finger while a great golden water buffalo casts its benign eye over the scene. You are enclosed by the embrace of the Great Wall of China, safe to admire the tree peonies, ferns, bamboos, giant Cardiocrinum lilies and other Asiatic species.
The Batemans and their friend Cooke have other surprises planned for you: for instance, the Egyptian pyramid that morphs into a Cheshire cottage, and the "upside-down trees" on the bank between the American garden and the dappled avenue lined with venerable lime trees. You need several hours to explore the garden and to examine the panels explaining James Bateman's creationist theories. It's hungry and thirsty work - fortunately, the small tea room serves good home-cooked food and excellently refreshing lemonade.
For more information, see www.trenthamleisure.co.uk, www.nationaltrust.org.uk (Biddulph is under "Places to visit") and www.staffordshiretourism.com