Biddulph Grange: The unique garden where you can walk through Ancient Egypt, China and Italy in a day

Biddulph Grange is a unique garden where visitors can walk across continents all in one day.

Based at Biddulph Grange Country Park in Staffordshire, this unusual National Trust landscape is a real hidden gem and has even been coined as a ‘horticultural Disneyland’.

Right near the border of Cheshire, the ‘playful paradise’ was designed by horticulturist and British landowner James Bateman after moving there in 1840, and offers a quirky masterpiece for all to enjoy. He lived there with his wife Maria for 27 years, and developed the masterpiece with her help and that of his friend, painter Edward William Cooke.

While exploring the fascinating grounds of the Grade-II listed garden, you can climb its 400 steps, pass by stone sphinxes, before you come across a bright red Chinese pagoda by a lake, and stumble upon a tiered Italian-style garden.

Walkers can take a step back in time — or all 400 of them — through a Tudor-style cottage and a Victorian garden, which overlooks the valley. Featured gardens include:

The China Garden

Bright reds and trimmings of gold make this little piece of an oriental haven stand out from the crowd. It even has a joss house, a tower and a ‘Great wall’ all of its own.

The Egyptian Garden

Walk through a tomb-like tunnel where a grand stone temple doorway bears an image of the sun god Ra along with four stone sphinxes, surrounded by clipped yew.

The Italy Garden

It features a series of magnificent trickling terraces, one after the other, in an Italian style. 

The incredible terraces are packed with plants from around the world – it might be Italian in style, but Italian plants apparently don’t grow well on a wet and windy English hillside.

The Stumpery

Here is where old tree stumps are used as makeshift scaffolding for climbing plants and is the oldest stumpery in the country. It has even been copied by Prince Charles’ home in Gloucestershire.

The Cheshire Cottage

This Tudor-style cottage dates back to 1856 and its facade includes the initials of James and his wife Maria.

The National Trust has drawn possible links between the Cheshire Cottage and Queen Victoria’s famous Swiss Cottage, which she built for her nine children around the same time.

In Bateman’s time, the cottage would have been the commanding focus surrounded by small trees – now it’s dwarfed by towering conifers.

More than just acres of stunning garden grounds, Biddulph Grange also has a Geological gallery, with a ‘unique Victorian display of fossils and geological strata laid out according to the Biblical days of creation’ — offering a ‘fascinating journey through time’.

There is also a woodland adventure play area, with see-saws, climbing frames and balancing beams — great for the young ones with plenty of energy to burn. Afterwards, you can wind down and take it all in at the tea rooms, where hot and cold food is served fresh daily.

Biddulph Grange is open from 10am to 3.30pm, Saturday to Wednesday, throughout January. Tickets for adults cost £12 and £6 for children.

It’s between 45 minutes and an hour to drive to Biddulph Grange Garden from most parts of Greater Manchester. You can also get to it by taking the train to Congleton then a short bus ride on the 94 service to St Lawrence’s Church.

You can find out more about Biddulph Grange Garden at the National Trust website here.