Edward Augustus Bowles
Edward Augustus Bowles | |
---|---|
Born | Enfield, London, England | 14 May 1865
Died | 7 May 1954 | (aged 88)
Nationality | English |
Occupation(s) | Horticulturalist, plantsman, garden writer |
Edward Augustus (Gus or Gussie) Bowles
Background
E. A. Bowles was born at his family's home, Myddelton House, in Enfield. He was of
Through his elder brother
Education and career
Described as "too delicate for public school",[8] Bowles spent much of his childhood at Myddelton before reading divinity at Jesus College, Cambridge.[9] He had wanted to enter the church, but family circumstances, including the death of a brother and sister from tuberculosis in a three-month period of 1887,[10] militated against this; so he remained at Myddelton and, in the words of one historian, "devoted himself to social work, painting, and natural history, particularly entomology".[11]
Bowles transformed the garden at Myddelton and, as a keen traveller, especially to Europe and North Africa, brought home with him many specimens of plant. Such was his collecting zeal that, by the turn of the 20th century, he was growing over 130 species of
Bowles inherited Myddelton on his father's death in 1918, but initially found this a mixed blessing, writing the following year to his friend and fellow horticulturalist William Robinson that, with a life interest in the property, he was unable to sell and yet found his income insufficient to maintain it to "as it used to be kept". At the time he was contemplating turning Myddelton into a "semi-wild garden".[14]
In 1908 Bowles was elected to the Council of the
Myddelton House
The garden at Myddelton House, which has been subject to considerable renovation in the early 21st century, is open to the public and contains a museum dedicated to Bowles' life and work. Many of the features that he created remain, including the rock garden (though this is now largely wild), the wisteria that he planted across a bridge that once crossed the New River, and his so-called "lunatic asylum" of horticultural oddities, such as the corkscrew hazel (Corylus avellana 'Contorta'),[18] that he developed after abandoning plans to construct a Japanese garden. The old Enfield market cross was salvaged to become the centrepiece of the rose garden, while two lead ostriches, dating from 1724, that once stood beside the wisteria bridge, have been restored after years of vandalism and are now housed in the museum.[19] On one of the walls overlooking the kitchen garden, Bowles' initials that he carved in 1887 can still be seen.
Two clumps have been maintained of the highly invasive
Visitors and horticultural contacts
Bowles received many distinguished visitors from the gardening world: for example, the great planting designer Gertrude Jekyll came to Myddelton twice in 1910, while Bowles was a guest at Jekyll's Munstead Wood.[23] An article in the Gardener's Magazine in 1910 observed "it would be difficult to imagine anything more delightful, floriculturally speaking, than to spend an hour or so with Mr. Bowles."[24] A so-called "tulip tea" was held annually at Myddelton to celebrate Bowles' birthday in early May. This usually coincided with the flowering of beds along his Tulip Terrace, which, given the tulip's decline in popularity since its mid-Victorian heyday, made him one of what he described in 1914, with reference to fellow devotees, as the "noble little band who keep up its cultivation [and] are doing a great work for future gardeners".[25]
Bowles was also the frequent recipient of specimens from other plantsmen. For example, in 1921 Sir
Others shared with Bowles information and views about horticulture and botany: in 1929 Frank Anthony Hampton (a physicist who wrote gardening books under the name of Jason Hill) corresponded about some twigs sent to him by Gertrude Jekyll to support the view that the pollen flowers of mistletoe carried a scent that was missing in fertilised ones.[30]
Mentor and talent spotter
Through the RHS, and in other ways, Bowles did much to encourage other gardeners. Among his protégées was an Enfield neighbour, Frances Perry (née Everett), who gained particular distinction as a horticultural writer, broadcaster and educationalist.[31] Another, Richard Durant (Dick) Trotter (1887–1968), who became a leading banker and Treasurer of the RHS, travelled with Bowles to the Alps and Greece in the 1920s.[32] Trotter was Treasurer of the RHS 1929–32, 1933–38 and 1943–48. He became a Director of the National Provincial Bank and later Chairman of the Alliance Assurance Company. Bowles often visited Trotter's garden at Leith Vale, Surrey and his daughter Elizabeth Parker-Jervis (1931–2010), herself a redoubtable gardener, claimed to have been "brought up on Bowles's knee".[33]
Bowles had a good eye for talent: in the early 1930s he became acquainted with
Publications
Bowles wrote a number of books about horticulture, notably My Garden in Spring, My Garden in Summer and My Garden in Autumn and Winter, all of which were published (1914–15) around the beginning of the
Bowles' more specialised works included his handbooks on crocuses (1924)
Death and legacy
Bowles continued to chair committees of the RHS until a few weeks before his death in 1954. His ashes were scattered on the rock garden at Myddelton House.[49] Bowles had no family of his own and the house and gardens passed to the University of London.[50] They are now owned and managed by the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority. The bulk of Bowles' correspondence is held by the RHS's Lindley Library. A charity, known as the E.A. Bowles of Myddelton House Society, seeks to maintain interest in both the man and his work and, since the fiftieth anniversary of his death in 2004, has sponsored a biennial studentship in his name in conjunction with the RHS. At its first annual general meeting in 1993, Andrew Parker-Bowles was elected president of the society, with Frances Perry (who died in October 1993) and Elizabeth Parker-Jervis as vice-presidents.[51]
Named varieties
Bowles gave his name to upwards of forty varieties of plant,
References
- ^ "E. A. Bowles of Myddelton House Society". Eabowlessociety.org.uk. Retrieved 19 July 2014.
- ^ Stearn 2004.
- ^ International Plant Names Index. Bowles.
- ^ a b "The Bowles of Myddelton House". Freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com. Retrieved 19 July 2014.
- ^ Miles Hadfield (1960) A History of British Gardening
- ^ Sir Henry Ferryman Bowles, 1st baronet (1858–1943), Member of Parliament for Enfield 1889–1906 and 1918–22.
- ^ Bryan Hewitt (1997) The Crocus King: E. A. Bowles of Myddelton House by Bryan Hewitt, The Rockingham Press 1997'; genealogical display in Myddelton House museum, 2011
- ^ Mark Griffiths (2000) A Century in Photographs: Gardening
- ^ "Bowles, Edward Augustus (BWLS884EA)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ Hewitt, op.cit.
- ^ Hadfield, op.cit.
- ^ Ursula Buchan in The Garden, October 2014, page 63
- ^ Mark Griffiths, .op.cit. Ellacombe's father was the divine and antiquary Henry Thomas Ellacombe, who preceded him as Rector of Bitton.
- ^ Letter to William Robinson (1919): see Liz Taylor, 'Letters to a Horticulturalist', The Garden, September 2014. Bowles had been with Robinson when the latter (1838–1935) sustained a disabling injury in 1909. At the time Robinson was regarded as the "king" of wild gardens: Taylor, loc.cit.
- ^ Hadfield, op.cit.
- ^ "E A Bowles of Myddelton House Society, Enfield". Eabowlessociety.org.uk. Archived from the original on 15 October 2017. Retrieved 19 July 2014.
- ^ Sally Festing (1991) Gertrude Jekyll
- ^ Griffiths, op.cit.. The corkscrew hazel is also known as "Harry Lauder's Walking Stick" after the celebrated musical hall artist. There another specimen in the garden at Forty Hall.
- ^ Crown, Hannah (23 October 2009). "Gough Park ostriches were chucked in river by students (From Enfield Independent)". Enfieldindependent.co.uk. Retrieved 19 July 2014.
- ^ Griffiths, op.cit.
- E.H. Wilson included it in his More Aristocrats of the Garden (1923). Gardens currently with large colonies include the Savill Garden at Windsor and Westonbirtin Gloucestershire.
- ^ Alan Titchmarsh in Country Life, 25 July 2012
- ^ Festing, op.cit.
- ^ Quoted in Festing, op.cit.
- ^ Bowles (1914) My Garden in Spring
- ^ Graham Rice & Elizabeth Strangman (1993) The Gardener's Guide to Growing Hellebores. Rice distinguished between a variant he obtained from Myddelton House (which, for convenience, he described as 'Myddelton Yellow') and one supposedly derived from the plant known as 'Bowles' Yellow' since the 1920s. They may in fact have been different plants: ibid. Two yellow-toned varieties, Helleborus orientalis 'Citron' and H.o. 'Sunny', may also have been descended from the yellow forms bred by Bowles (Diana Baskervyle-Glegg in Country Life, 15 February 2001 at page 50).
- ^ "Harveys Garden Plants". www.harveysgardenplants.co.uk. Archived from the original on 19 April 2014. Retrieved 19 July 2014.
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: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - ^ "Norfolk Churches". Norfolk Churches. Retrieved 19 July 2014.
- ^ a b Roy Lancaster in The Garden, February 2012, page 76
- ^ Festing, op.cit.
- ^ Anna Pavord in The Independent, 15 October 1993 (obituary of Frances Perry), Bowles told Perry, then Frances Everett, that he looked on her as "one of my boys": quoted ibid.
- ^ Ursula Buchan (2007) Valerie Finnis & the Golden Age of Gardening
- ^ Grimshaw, John (18 March 2010). "John Grimshaw's Garden Diary: Elizabeth Parker-Jervis 1931–2010". Johngrimshawsgardendiary.blogspot.com. Retrieved 19 July 2014.
- Cambridge Botanic Garden, was publishing botanical papers while still in his teens. He became a distinguished botanical etymologist.
- ^ Buchan, op.cit.
- ^ Hadfield, op.cit.. Farrer called Bowles "Uncle G" (Festing, op.cit.), as did Dick Trotter, referred to above.
- Beatleswho became a fanatical gardener: ibid.; Pattie Boyd (2007) Wonderful Today.
- ^ Willmot had purchased the Villa Boccanegra at Ventimiglia in 1906, the garden occupying a 1,000-foot section of the cliffside down to the sea. She never revisited it after the outbreak of the First World War: Charles Quest-Ritson in Country Life, 26 October 2011.
- ^ Festing, op.cit.
- ^ M. Cox in Country Life, 17 October 1925: see Mark Hedges (ed.), The Glory of the Garden: a Horticultural Celebration (Country Life, 2012)
- ^ Richard Bisgrove (2008) William Robinson: Wild Gardener
- ^ Boyd, op.cit.
- ^ Hewitt, op.cit.
- ^ "Ellen Ann Willmott - a true genius of the place - A disagreement with E.A. Bowles - Parks and Gardens UK". Archived from the original on 25 February 2011. Retrieved 17 August 2011.
- ^ Festing, op.cit.
- ^ a b Bowles 1952.
- ^ Handbook of Narcissus (1934)
- ^ Stern (1956) Snowdrops and Snowflakes. See Buchan, op.cit.
- ^ Hadfield, op.cit.
- ^ Hadfield, op.cit.
- ^ Bowles 2022.
- ^ "See list at". Eabowlessociety.org.uk. Archived from the original on 15 October 2017. Retrieved 19 July 2014.
- ^ Graham Rice & Elizabeth Strangman (1993) The Gardener's Guide to Growing Hellebores
- ^ "Later Squadron Leader Robert Sills: Hewitt, op.cit.". Eabowlessociety.org.uk. Archived from the original on 11 February 2012. Retrieved 19 July 2014.
- ^ Robert Grant in Scotland on Sunday, 3 November 2002
- ^ The Garden, volume 129, part 2, page 119 (February 2004)
- ^ Chelsea Centenary supplement, The Garden, May 2013. 'Bowles' Mauve' was introduced at Chelsea in 1982 by a team from Kew, although it was already to be found in gardens and its precise origin is unknown: Roy Lancaster on RHS Chelsea Flower Show (BBC 1 TV), 23 May 2013.
- ^ Griffiths, op.cit.
- ^ Jekka's Complete Herb List (2011)
- ^ Royal Horticultural Society Gardeners' Encyclopaedia of Plants and Flowers (1989)
- ^ Carol Klein in Daily Telegraph, 3 May 2003
- ^ Christopher Lloyd (2007) Cuttings, page 93
- ^ Vita Sackville-West in The Observer, 15 February 1953 (reprinted in Sackville-West (1955) In Your Garden Again)
- ^ Tony Lord (2003) Planting Schemes from Sissinghurst
- ^ The Garden, March 2012, page 60
- ^ Pat Bourne in Daily Telegraph, 22 July 2010.
- ^ Grimshaw, John (31 January 2011). "John Grimshaw's Garden Diary: Galanthus plicatus 'E.A.Bowles' – some corrections". Johngrimshawsgardendiary.blogspot.com. Retrieved 19 July 2014.
- ^ David Wheeler in The Oldie, January 2013
Bibliography
- Bowles, Edward Augustus (1952) [1924]. A handbook of Crocus and Colchicum for gardeners (2nd ed.). Van Nostrand.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/57209. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ISBN 978-0571103065.
- Bowles (2022). "Home". E. A. Bowles of Myddelton House Society. Retrieved 23 January 2022.
Recommended Reading: "The Crocus King:E A Bowles of Myddelton House "by Bryan Hewitt, with a foreword by Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles, gt, gt, nephew of E A Bowles The Rockingham Press. 1997. And soon to be published "The Crocus King E A Bowles of Myddelton House, The Garden Restored." An updating of the previous biography, it covers the past 20 years and the restoration of the garden as the result of Myddelton House Gardens winning 500,000pounds Heritage Lottery Fund money in 2009 .