Head gardener Sam Youd told the Knutsford Guardian yesterday (Tuesday) that the Japanese government had donated £100,000 to help restore Tatton's Japanese Garden.

"They wanted to give it their best shot because they told me it was the most important Japanese garden in Europe," he said.

The latest development will again put Knutsford on the map following the success of last month's Royal Horticultural Society Flower Show.

Tatton's gardens are expected to play their part in the Year of Japan celebrations in 2001 when they open in March.

The donation is just £50,000 short of the maximum amount given out by the government for such projects and will be spent on restoration and landscaping.

A further £100,000 has been channelled into the scheme by the National Trust and Tatton Park.

But yesterday it emerged that the boost from overseas had taken 10 YEARS of talks and a lot of hard work from bosses at Tatton.

"They see things differently to us so we have had to work on that," said Sam.

As well as financial backers green-fingered foreigners are needed to do the work the Japanese way.

Experts from the Far East are visiting Cheshire to pass on some words of advice to one of the county's best-known gardeners.

This week Hiroyuki Tsuji was pruning trees in his own style at the park.

"They view gardening differently to us," said Sam. "Here if there is a hole in the garden we fill it, but a Japanese garden is complete when you cannot take anything else out."

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.