Exploring abroad
Ursula Buchan
British gardens look the way they do for a number of impressively diverse reasons: politics, fashion, culture, society, creative energy, geology and climate. These imperatives, when connected, have produced one of the great glories of our civilisation. There is one more aspect, however, which is the work of only a small number of individuals. That aspect is plant exploration abroad.
Our gardens are not little parcels of native landscape, for the simple reason that they are full of exotic plants plucked from foreign habitats and persuaded to thrive in our climate. These exotics have mainly been introduced by plant-hunters. Whole families of garden-worthy plants have arrived here by those means, Without plant exploration, we would have no rhododendrons, gentians, magnolias, meconopsis, daphnes or Douglas firs. Our primulas would be restricted to the cowslip and primrose, our irises consist of the gladdon and the yellow water flag and our conifers be limited to the Scots pine and yew.
Plant-hunters risked (and still do risk, since plant-hunting has far from died out even if it has partly changed in character) their health, wealth and lives to collect plants in other countries, often in very difficult circumstances. Gardeners are, not surprisingly, fascinated by these people, which is why the centenary of George Forrest's first plant-hunting expedition in 1904 is being celebrated by the publication of a book, a lecture day in April and a number of commemorative events in those large gardens which have benefited particularly from Forrest introductions, such as the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, Exbury and Caerhays.
Plant-hunting has always been so difficult, if rewarding, and required such strength of character and determination because our gardens require plants hardy against frost yet able to withstand wind and wet. In other countries, that often means they have to come from mountainous regions above 1,500 metres. George Forrest's seven expeditions between 1904 and 1932 (when he died of a heart attack while shooting game) were conducted in north-west Yunnan, close to the borders with Burma and Tibet, in that vertiginously mountainous area bisected longitudinally by the rivers Salween, Mekong and Yangtze, and at altitudes ranging from 1,000 to 5.000 metres. Western China is one of the most floristically rich temperate regions in the world, and is still the stamp ing ground for adventurous British planthunters, such as Peter Cox, Roy Lancaster and Chris Grey-Wilson.
The son of a Scottish draper, Forrest had been, among other things, a gold prospector in Australia before he settled to work in the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. When he was 31, the Regius Keeper, Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour, was approached by Arthur Bulley, a Liverpool cotton broker who had established a nursery at his garden at Ness (now the Ness Botanic Gardens). He wanted a plant-hunter to look for garden-worthy plants in areas of China not yet even surveyed. Bayley Balfour suggested Forrest: 'He is a strongly built fellow and seems to me of the right grit for a collector.'
On his first expedition, which lasted three years, Forrest found the autumn gentian, Gentiana sino-omata, but nearly lost his life when he and some French missionaries, with whom he had been staying, were forced to flee by warlike Tibetan lamas. The French were murdered and their hearts torn out, and he was hunted mercilessly for nine days. He eventually escaped, thanks to his fitness and resourcefulness, including taking his boots off so that he could not be tracked.
Bulley paid for the first two expeditions, but the third was financed by J.C. Williams of Caerhays Castle in Cornwall. Then it was the turn of the Royal Horticultural Society and a 'Syndicate of Gentlemen', which included Williams and Reginald Cory of Dyffryn. Forty-six well-heeled garden owners sponsored his last expedition in 1930. These were large and well-organised ventures, using native helpers to collect plants or seed. On Forrest's last expedition, 300 lbs of seed were sent home.
In all, he collected 31,000 'immaculately annotated' dried specimens, of which more than 5,000 were rhododendrons. He introduced to cultivation some of our very finest woodland garden shrubs: Rhododendron sinogrande; R. griersonianum (the parent of many important hybrids such as 'Elizabeth'); the groundhugging R. fort-estii; Camellia saluenensis which Williams crossed with C. japonica to produce the famous C. x williamsii hybrids, and Pieris formosa var. forrestii. Among perennials, there was the wonderful (and easy) blue Gentiana sino-ornata, as well as Primula bulleyana, P. malacoides and P. forrestii. It is no exaggeration to say that the 20th-century 'woodland garden' developed as a result of Forrest's introductions. His success was reinforced by the introductions of Reginald Farrer, Frank Ludlow, George Sheriff and Frank Kingdon Ward.
A bald list of plants gives no hint of the fascination of plant-hunting: the romance, the fear, the fatigue, the discomfort, the loneliness, the disappointments and the excitement of finding something previously unknown and beautiful. Unlike Kingdon Ward, Forrest wrote no books, only artiI cles in gardening periodicals. But the plants growing in large gardens are memorial enough.
For a list of Forrest-related events, visit www.rhodogroup-rhs. orgIForrestEvents Mtn; Brenda McLean's George Forrest: Plant Hunter (Antique Collectors' Club, £29.50) has just been published.
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