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Edward Augustus Bowles

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Crocus E A Bowles

Edward Augustus (Gus or Gussie) Bowles, VMH (14 May 1865 – 7 May 1954), known professionally as E.A. Bowles, was a British horticulturalist[1], plantsman and garden writer.[2] He developed an important garden at Myddelton House, his lifelong home near Enfield, Middlesex and his name has been preserved in many varieties of plant.

Background

E. A. Bowles was born at his family's home, Myddelton House (1818), near Enfield. He was of Huguenot descent through his maternal great-grandmother[3] and his father, Henry Carington Bowles Bowles (sic) (1830-1918),[4] was Chairman of the New River Company, which until 1904 controlled the artificial waterway that flowed past Myddelton, bringing water to London from the River Lea.[5]. Through his elder brother Henry, Bowles was related to Andrew Parker Bowles (born 1939), whose first wife, Camilla Shand, became Duchess of Cornwall on her marriage to Charles, Prince of Wales in 2005.[6]

Education and career

Described as "too delicate for public school",[7] Bowles spent much of his childhood at Myddelton before reading divinity at Jesus College, Cambridge.[8] He had wanted to enter the church, but family circumstances, including the death of two siblings from tuberculosis, 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".[9]

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 colchicum and crocus. Many of the foreign expeditions were timed to mitigate the symptoms of acute hay fever, with Alpine or other mountainous regions being favoured destinations in late spring. Bowles' gardening mentor was Canon Henry Nicholson Ellacombe (1822-1916), Rector of Bitton, Gloucestershire, who wrote a number of books about gardening, including plant lore in English literature.[10]

In 1908 Bowles was elected to the Council of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS),[11] whose grounds at Wisley, Surrey, now contain a memorial garden to him. Bowles received the society's highest award, the Victorian Medal of Honour, in 1916 and was a Vice-President from 1926 until his death almost thirty years later.[12] RHS colleagues knew him as "Bowley".[13]

Myddelton House

The gardens at Myddelton House in winter

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'),[14] 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.[15] 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 Japanese knot weed, whose architectural qualities Bowles admired. Bowles also grew a gigantic gunnera, which flourished at Myddelton despite its hard water and dry, gravelly soil, and dwarfed a schoolgirl named Miss Malby whom Bowles photographed beside it in 1927.[16] More generally, he had an eye for unusual and uncommon plants, one of his favourites being yellowroot (Xanthorhiza simplicissima), which is rarely grown in British gardens, but whose "quaint beauty" he appreciated.[17]

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.[18] 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."[19] 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".[20]

Bowles was also the frequent recipient of specimens from other plantsmen. For example, in 1921 Sir Frederick Moore, director of the National Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin, near Dublin, Ireland, sent him a collection of hellebores that have thrived at Myddelton. These included a variety that became known as 'Bowles' Yellow' (although it appears that differing strains originating from Myddelton may have been distributed under this name, while other named varieties may have been descended from one or more of these).[21] Stories differ as to why Bowles named a particular snowdrop Galanthus plicatus 'Warham Rectory’, but, according to one version, flowers of it were sent to him in 1916 by Charles Tilton Digby, Rector of Warham, Norfolk.[22]. 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.[23]

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 First World War. The preface to the first of these by Bowles' friend Reginald Farrer, with whom he often travelled abroad,[24] contained some comments about showy rock gardens which Sir Frank Crisp, owner of Friar Park, Henley-on-Thames, and Ellen Willmott, who had known Gertrude Jekyll since 1873[25] and, like Bowles, was a leading figure in the RHS, took as personal criticism. This led Willmott to circulate a uncomplimentary pamphlet about Bowles and his garden at the second Chelsea Flower Show in 1914, thereby escalating a row which, however, was patched up the following year, when Bowles invited Willmot to Myddelton House.[26]

Bowles' more specialised works included his handbooks on crocuses (1924) and narcissi (1934), which contained his own illustrations.[27]

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.[28] Bowles had no family of his own and the house and gardens passed to the University of London.[29] 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.

Named varieties

Bowles gave his name to upwards of forty varieties of plant,[30] and there are others that originated with him. For example, he named a hellebore 'Gerrard Parker' after a local art master[31] and Crocus tommasinianus 'Bobbo' after the boy who first spotted it.[32] Erysimum 'Bowles' Mauve' was among "200 plants for 200 years" chosen by the RHS to mark its bicentenary in 2004.[33]. Other significant introductions included Viola 'Bowles' Black'[34], cotton lavender 'Edward Bowles' (Santolina pinnata subsp. neopolitana)[35], and Bowles' golden sedge (Carex stricta 'Aurea')[36], which he found on Wicken Fen[37] and has been described by another doyen of plantsmen, Christopher Lloyd, as "a plant to treasure, its colour changing in unexpected ways".[38] Vita Sackville-West cited the yellow and brown Crocus chrysanthus 'E.A. Bowles' as among the first bulbs to flower in her garden at Sissinghurst in January or early February[39], while, in the nuttery there, Bowles' golden grass (Milium effusum 'Aureum') is interspersed in spring with wood anemones and white bluebells.[40]

Some plants bearing Bowles' name have been introduced since his death. An example is Phlomis 'Edward Bowles', launched by Hiller Nursuries in 1967, which apparently derives from seeds at Myddelton.[41] In February 2011 a single bulb of the snowdrop G. p. 'E A Bowles', discovered at Myddelton in 2002, was sold on the internet auction site eBay for a record price of £357.[42]

The standard author abbreviation Bowles is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.[43]

References

  1. ^ E. A. Bowles of Myddelton House Society
  2. ^ Stearn, W. T., 'Edward Augustus Bowles (1865–1954)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004) ISBN 0-19-861411-X
  3. ^ Anne Garnault, who married Henry Carington Bowles of the publishing firm Bowles & Carver in 1799: [1]
  4. ^ Son of Anne Sarah Bowles, who inherited Myddelton House and married Edward Treacher. Their son adopted his mother's surname in 1852 for inheritence purposes ([2]) and married E.A. Bowles' mother, Cornelia Kingdom (1831-1911), in 1856.
  5. ^ Miles Hadfield (1960) A History of British Gardening
  6. ^ Genealogical display in Myddelton House museum, 2011
  7. ^ Mark Griffiths (2000) A Century in Photographs: Gardening
  8. ^ "Bowles, Edward Augustus (BWLS884EA)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  9. ^ Hadfield, op.cit.
  10. ^ Mark Griffiths, .op.cit. Ellacombe's father was the divine and antiquary Henry Thomas Ellacombe, who preceded him as Rector of Bitton.
  11. ^ Hadfield, op.cit.
  12. ^ [3]
  13. ^ Sally Festing (1991) Gertrude Jekyll
  14. ^ Griffiths, op.cit.
  15. ^ [4]
  16. ^ Griffiths, op.cit.
  17. ^ Roy Lancaster in The Garden, volume 120, part 12, page 743 (December 1995). Yellowroot was introduced from North America, where it is also a rare garden plant (and an endangered species in Florida), around the time of the War of Independence. 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 Westonbirt in Gloucestershire.
  18. ^ Festing, op.cit.
  19. ^ Quoted in Festing, op.cit.
  20. ^ Bowles (1914) My Garden in Spring
  21. ^ 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).
  22. ^ [5];[6] Bowles named Galanthus 'Benhall Beauty' after the village near Saxmundham, Suffolk where it was grown by John Gray (died 1952), a noted snowdrop specialist who gave his name to the variety G. 'John Gray'.
  23. ^ Festing, op.cit.
  24. ^ Hadfield, op.cit.. Farrer called Bowles "Uncle G" (Festing, op.cit.), as did Richard Durant (Dick) Trotter (1887-1968), banker, horticulturalist and RHS Treasurer, whose garden at Leith Vale, Surrey Bowles often visited. Trotter's daughter Elizabeth Parker-Jervis (1931-2010), herself a redoubtable gardener, claimed to have been "brought up on Bowles's knee" (http://johngrimshawsgardendiary.blogspot.com/2010/03/elizabeth-parker-jervis-1931-2010.html)
  25. ^ Festing, op.cit.
  26. ^ [7] Ellen Willmott and Gertrude Jekyll were the first female recipients of the RHS's Victorian Medal of Honour, instituted in 1897 and, as noted, bestowed on Bowles in 1916. One of Jekyll's biographers wrote that Willmott "was in many ways as unusual as Gertrude" (Festing, op.cit.).
  27. ^ Handbook of Crocus and Colchicum (1924); Handbook of Narcissus (1934)
  28. ^ Hadfield, op.cit.
  29. ^ Hadfield, op.cit.
  30. ^ See list at [8]
  31. ^ Graham Rice & Elizabeth Strangman (1993) The Gardener's Guide to Growing Hellebores
  32. ^ [9]
  33. ^ The Garden, volume 129, part 2, page 119 (February 2004)
  34. ^ Griffiths, op.cit.
  35. ^ Jekka's Complete Herb List (2011)
  36. ^ Royal Horticultural Society Gardeners' Encyclopaedia of Plants and Flowers (1989)
  37. ^ Carol Klein in Daily Telegraph, 3 May 2003
  38. ^ Christopher Lloyd (2007) Cuttings, page 93
  39. ^ Vita Sackville-West in The Observer, 15 February 1953 (reprinted in Sackville-West (1955) In Your Garden Again')
  40. ^ Tony Lord (2003) Planting Schemes from Sissinghurst
  41. ^ Pat Bourne in Daily Telegraph, 22 July 2010.
  42. ^ [10]
  43. ^ International Plant Names Index.  Bowles.

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