In the far west of China, where the atlas marks in streaks of purple the great plateau of Tibet tumbling to the south and east into the plains of China, the great province of Sichuan lies. Its subtropical fertile plain, known as the Red Basin, is ringed by mountains, and its remoteness from the political center and its relative inaccessibility, until recently ensured that this region was China's 'Wild West', to both Chinese and foreigners alike. The west of the province, dominated by those great mountain ranges with peaks towering to over 7,000 metres, was Kham Tibet and Jiarong Tibet. Today the Tibetan people of western Sichuan cling fiercely to their distinct way of life, language and culture, as do other ethnic minorities such as the Hui and Qiang, despite the modernization since 1978.
The great range of environmental conditions here, from alpine slopes to temperate forests and high grasslands, has given rise to one of the richest and most diverse temperate floras in the world. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, and into the early twentieth, the great plant-hunters Ernest Wilson, George Forrest, Joseph Rock, and Purdom and Farrer travelled through Sichuan and collected what, today, are some of our best-known garden plants, and introduced them for the first time into cultivation in European gardens. It is only in recent years that Sichuan has become accessible again to travellers from outside China, making it possible for intrepid plant enthusiasts to see in the wild some of these species. The sheer range of plants is breathtaking, and there is still a long way to go in assessing their potential in horticulture. Change is happening very fast but the vast reaches of western Sichuan are still infrequently visited by Westerners.