THOSE interested in natural history are usually quite prepared to travel long distances in search of birds or mammals, writes Ron Freethy.

However, very few seem keen to make a special trip to study a botanical garden. This is a great pity because at Ness Gardens on the Wirral is one of the best in the world.

It is open from March to October from 9.30am to dusk and from November to February from 9.30am-4.30pm. Refreshments are available and there is also a shop where plants are on sale.

Books are also on sale and there are good facilities for the disabled. Details about electric wheelchairs and aids can be obtained by ringing 0151 353 0123. Ness Gardens are reached via the M56 motorway and is signed from the Hoylake road (A540). In 1898 Arthur Kilpin Bulley, a Liverpool cotton merchant, began to create his garden, which he always made available to local residents. Bulley was interested in exotic plants and sponsored expeditions to the Far East. He was responsible for discovering important botanists such as George Forest and Frank Kingdom Ward. This is the place to discover the history of British botany.

Part of Bulley's garden was devoted to the propagation of those plants and he set up a plant and seed company known as Bees Ltd. In 1911 this company became so large that it moved to a 1,000 acre site at Sealand near Chester and changed the face of British gardening.

Bulley, however, never lost interest in his own garden and he loved such blooms as the beautiful blue Gentiana sino-orrnata, which is at its best in autumn. Arthur Bulley died in 1942 and six years later his daughter presented the gardens to the University of Liverpool with an endowment of £75,000.

She also specified that the public were to be admitted.

The entrance fee is modest, the staff friendly and the plants a joy.

There is colour in all seasons, the hot houses keep exotic plants in perfect conditions and guided tours for schools and other groups are a feature of Ness.

Visitors can also turn up and ask to help in the garden.

No one is turned away and the views from Ness across the Mersey estuary show the balance between native wildlife and Bulley's introduced masterpiece.

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