CENTRAL to the creation of the Japanese Garden at Cowden is a series of adventurous women. The tale begins with Isabella ‘Ella’ Christie (1861–1949): one of the first women to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, she spoke four languages and travelled to faraway lands, such as Kashmir, Tibet, Borneo and Malaya, keeping meticulous diaries. In 1925, she published Through Khiva to Golden Samarkand, an account of her travels along the Silk Road through the Russian empire.
However, it was the otherworldly gardens of Tokyo and Kyoto that inspired her on a visit in 1907, three years before the great Japanese exhibition at White City of 1910 kicked off a craze for Japonisme in Britain. ‘You can
