One of the most successful – and bravest – of these plant hunters was George Forrest. In 1904, Arthur Bulley sponsored Forrest to search North West Yunnan, in China, for plants for his own garden and for his newest venture – Bees Ltd a commercial seed and plant nursery established in the potting sheds at Ness. These potting sheds can still be seen in the gardens, one of which has been redeveloped for use as an education facility and renamed the Coach House.
This trip launched Forrest’s plant hunting career and he returned to China on six more expeditions, risking his life by undertaking adventures such as climbing to heights of 16,000 feet, exploring deep ravines and collecting over 30,000 dried plant specimens for identification as well as gathering thousands and thousands of seeds.
Forrest named plants after Bulley, his first sponsor, including Iris Bulleyana and Primua bulleyana, which can be seen today in the Rock Garden at Ness. Bulley also asked that Forrest name other finds in promotion of Bees Ltd, including Primula beesiana, Jasminium beesianum and Allium beesianum.
With Forrest, and later Frank Kingdon-Ward, Bulley was responsible for introducing hundreds of new plants to British gardens including Rhododendrons such as Rhododendron beesianum: sight of the large clusters of flowers would have been a rare sight in the early 1900s. Many of Bulley’s introductions are planted around the gardens, such as the Pieris Formosa ‘Forrestii’.
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