Lottery Grant for Restoration of E.A. Bowles' Garden

[Maggi Young]

EA Bowles' Myddelton House Gardens to get £487k restoration

From the Horticulture Week daily report :

The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has granted £487,000 to restore EA Bowles' 19th-century Myddelton House Gardens in London.

Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles and HLF London committee chairman Wesley Kerr planted a silver birch to commemorate the event today (21 January).

The gardens in Bull's Cross, Enfield, were created by EA Bowles, one of the greatest gardeners of the 19th and 20th centuries. The two-year project will open the Victorian Kitchen Garden for the first time, show how horticulture was carried out in Victorian times and create education and training programmes and restore historically important artefacts.

The story of Bowles, including rarely seen artefacts and historic photographs, will also be made available to visitors at the gardens, owned by Lee Valley Regional Park Authority which uses Bowles' grand house as its head office. Bowles was born at Myddelton House in 1865 and died there in 1954.

Kerr said: "All great gardens carry the imprint and character of their creator. Even though Edward Bowles died half a century ago, the broad outlines and some of the plants from one of London's most poetic horticultural plantations remain at Myddelton House in a remarkably peaceful and evocative setting.

"The potting shed feels as though Bowles had just stepped out. HLF is pleased to help restore this historic and delightful garden, which will soon be open to the public for no charge. It's a great addition to the £95 million we have already invested in London's parks and gardens and, together with the investment nearby at the historic mansion Forty Hall, will help make north Enfield, already a gardener's haven, a fine heritage destination."

The grant will greatly enhance the information available to visitors about the garden's creator, plantsman EA Bowles, who is recognised as an outstanding gardener as well as a writer and talented botanical illustrator.

The gardens contain the national collection of the bearded Iris, plus a wealth of other plants as well as wildlife. Bowles was a prolific plant breeder and more than 40 varieties named after him are still available in the RHS catalogue.

Bryan Hewitt, Bowles' biographer and senior gardener at Myddelton House said:

"This award means a renaissance for Myddelton House Gardens. I have worked in the garden for 25 years and it was all but derelict and forgotten until Lee Valley Regional Park Authority began a restoration programme in 1984. We have recently received a Green Flag Award for the garden and now we can create a visitor centre dedicated to EA Bowles.

"We will be restoring historically significant monuments such as the Enfield Market Cross and other garden ornaments cherished by Mr Bowles. The Victorian Kitchen Garden will once again be up and running and the long-neglected boiler room that Mr Bowles' father used to heat his glass houses from 1859 will be restored for use as a potting shed."

[mark smyth]

That's great news but I hope they respect existing plants.

[Maggi Young]

This report today from 'Horticulture Week Daily'...... the lottery amount seems to have changed.....

Restoration work to EA Bowles' famous Myddelton House Gardens in Enfield is progressing well following a £447,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).


The restoration of the 19th century gardens began in 2009, including works to the Victorian kitchen garden, which features a potting shed, cold frames and a peach house. The north London site is managed by the Lea Valley Regional Park Authority.

The newly refurbished potting shed includes a compost oven for demonstrations on how to make compost, a reference library for educational purposes and a small staff area for gardeners' respite.

A visitor centre has also been built to house a cafe and heritage centre that will show the history of the gardens and EA Bowles' life. It is hoped that vegetables grown in the Kitchen Garden can be used in the cafe or sold to visitors.

Project manager Paul Roper said: "One of the key reasons that we couldn't open the kitchen garden was because the potting shed building was unsafe. It's always been an aspiration to open this part of the garden to the public but we needed to get the building safe first."

He added: "We want it to be a working museum for people to come and see what Bowles would have done and what our gardeners are doing now."

Roper said the project is currently on track and operating within budget. "The HLF grant has given us some really good infrastructure to build on. But in terms of the horticultural side of things, it's not going to be completely ready next year. There are more elements and new projects to come on plan and people can come and see that developing."

Head gardener Andrew Turvey added: "We have one senior gardener for just looking after the kitchen garden now because part of the project was to secure another person to maintain the area."

He continued: "Although we are opening to the public next year, we only have six months to turn it into a proper Kitchen Garden - it's going to take some time." The Kitchen Garden will open to the public in April 2011.

[Rodger Whitlock]

Too bad no one has gotten a grant to oversee publication of Bowles' collected works. His books are well known, but he also wrote innumerable articles in journals and magazines, and these are largely lost to memory. Yet, judging from the few I've seen, they are collectively a treasure house of horticultural lore.

Inclusion of good plates of Bowles' own water colors (if they can be photographed without causing further fading of the fugitive dyes he sometimes used) would be icing on the cake.

[fermi de Sousa]

I wonder if it would be worth visiting next year after the Alpines 2011 Conference?
How far is it from Nottingham?
cheers
fermi

[rob krejzl]

Fermi,

It is just by the M25, NE of London - close to the old 'nursery belt' at Enfield where Perry and others were (and about a mile from where my grandparents were married).

[Otto Fauser]

I wonder if it would be worth visiting next year after the Alpines 2011 Conference?
How far is it from Nottingham?
cheers
fermi

Fermi , when we visited the garden in 2001 in june , we found it still in a rather neglected state , but surely after 10 years we should see a great improvement - so let's visit it next year .

        cheers Otto.   

[PeterT]

It was not just neglected - it was close to derelict 5 years ago and getting worse, mostly used as a nature reserve. The new head gardener (Andrew Turvey) has turned things around fast.
He is respecting and uncovering the design, rooting out self set and surplus holly, elder, ash, bramble, snowberry etc.. Identifying important plants, and respecting the spirit in which the garden was created, when it was at the front of modern garden development, turning away from parkland to horticulture/ gardening on a smaller scale reflecting the botanical interests of the owner of the garden