AROUND THE WORLD ... IN YOUR GARDEN!

As the Mail’s Monty Don lays bare the colonial origins of our favourite plants, we show how you can go...

Foreign holidays may have become difficult due to Covid-19. But if you love plants, a world tour awaits you in almost every garden in the country.

This week, the gardener and TV presenter Monty Don pointed out that our gardens are indelibly linked to Britain’s colonial past because, from the late 18th century, the British collected plants from all over the world to enjoy at home.

it is extraordinary to realise just how many parts of the world have contributed to our gardens. From chrysanthemums (Japan) to the carnation (the Mediterranean), begonia (South America) to busy lizzies (east Africa), magnolia grandiflora (southern U.S.) to michaelmas daisies (north America), vast numbers of garden favourites have been adopted here from all corners of the globe.

We should never forget that collecting plants in the far-flung corners of the British empire or the wider world was not a stroll in the park. The men — and, by and large, they were mainly men — who embarked on these expeditions, mostly during the 19th and early 20th centuries, endured risks to life and limb.

They combed grasslands, forests, cold wastes and deserts across six continents to find and bring home species to beautify our gardens. Photographs invariably show them carrying a gun and standing alongside similarly armed local guides. They were men such as the Scottish plant hunter robert Fortune, who was the first to collect in China after the end of the opium wars.

Today, in our gardens, we can celebrate his collections by growing the anemones and winter-flowering jasmine.

But how can any one garden pay proper tribute to explorer ernest Wilson, who single-handedly introduced more than 1,200 species of tree and shrub? By making a token gesture perhaps, and growing the regal lily and the paper-bark maple he brought back as seeds from China.

We are hugely fortunate in Britain to be able to cultivate a wider range of plants in a relatively small geographical area than almost anywhere else on the planet.

our climate — variable but seldom truly extreme — and an enormous range of soil types mean we can accommodate countless thousands of different plant species.

As well as those intrepid explorers, we also owe thanks to the skill of our plant breeders, who have selected the best forms of these imported treasures and crossed and improved them to suit local conditions.

For, as the graphic on this page demonstrates, their origins are simply remarkable . . .