Date: Fri 14-Nov-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: CAROLL

Quick Words:

Gardener-Bowles-crocus-Bleach

Full Text:

(Suburban Gardener on E.A. Bowles, crocuses, etc)

Suburban Gardener--

Talking Fish And The Crocus King

"All patiently does he invoke us

To do homage to the crocus

The plants he does not understand

Thrive not in this or any land

Treasures that baffle us he dotes upon

And grows among his `weeds' at Myddelton"

--E.A. Bowles,

historic garden writer

and gardener

By Anthony C. Bleach

Through the years, E.A. Bowles has been reappearing like a secret code. There

is a crocus everyone knows. Quotations from his garden books show a mastery of

prose as well as plants. His books are now being republished, 85 years after

they first appeared.

Geoff Stebbings has written an illuminating, intimate piece in The Garden ,

journal of the Royal Horticulture Society. Excerpts from this essay make up

this week's column:

Bowles was invited to write a series of books in 1912 by R. Hooper Pearson,

editor of The Gardener's Chronicle . It is through these books - My Garden In

Spring, My Garden in Summer and My Garden in Autumn and Winter - that most

people have come to know the gardener who was called "the crocus king," and

become well acquainted with his garden.

His "lunatic asylum," which was a home for "demented" plants, began with a

twisted hazel, one of the first three ever grown. It had been discovered by

Lord Ducie in a hedgerow in the West Country, and passed to Bowles, like many

of his early plants, by Canon Ellacombe - one of the many gardening clergymen

who were so vital in horticultural circles at the end of the last century and

beginning of this one.

Corylus avellana ("Contorta") is now a common garden plant; we know it as

"Lander's walking stick." Bowles wrote of it with great excitement, and around

it he grew plants that were often beautiful but always bizarre.

Almost as famous, and similarly frowned upon by those who write about good

taste, was "Tom Tiddler's Ground." This central area of the garden, bisected

by a straight path, was devoted to variegated plants.

Bowles had a Catholic taste in plants and rarely objected to any group

(although begonias and celosias were reviled by him), and variegation was seen

as a bright benefit in the garden scene. These plants were grouped according

to their type - yellow variegation, white variegation and silver - to create a

glitter of color mimicking the pot of gold Tom Tiddler is said to have found

after following a rainbow to its end.

Bowles was also fond of cacti and succulents, which were potted and brought

out to adorn the terraces by the pond and by the New River, which ran through

the garden. One bed on the terrace was also filled with their sculptural

outlines for the summer.

Japanese ornaments are today so freely available and so misunderstood that

they are not taken seriously by some gardeners. But Bowles found Japanese

gardens fascinating and assiduously collected photographs, catalogues and

clippings from which he drew ideas for his own Japanese garden. It was to be

based around wisterias, trained over the bridge across the New River and as

free-standing specimens.

However, although the wisterias were planted, the area set aside was filled,

instead, with his lunatics and the project shrank to a bamboo screen, and a

Japanese lantern given to him by the local people on his 70th birthday.

It is often believed that a man who filled his garden with nature's most

fascinating, but often unassuming plants, would not have time for bedding said

plants. But he loved scarlet Salvia splendens , "which goes out in June as

nice bushy little plants with fiery scarlet heads, and flares away in

ever-increasing, red-hot refulgence until a sharp October frost throws a

pailful of cold water on its glowing cinders and puts out their glory" ( My

Garden in Summer )."

These bold bedders were grown, like all his plants, for their own beauty and

never used in clever, or coarse, combinations. He reveled in the beauty of

every plant, and many people who visited the garden recall it was his

infectious enthusiasm and vast knowledge that brought the garden alive and

drew attention to plants that would otherwise be overlooked.

Bowles' plants are not necessarily good garden plants, though many, such as

Carex elata "Aurea" (Bowles' golden sedge), Milium effusum "Aureum" (Bowles'

golden grass), Penstemon "Myddelton Gem" and Erysimum "Bowles' Mauve" are in

many English gardens.

The late Frances Perry was encouraged to enter horticulture through her

childhood visits to the garden, and she always maintained that "Bowles' Mauve"

wallflower was never grown by him, but was introduced after his death. Many

plants must have been associated with him because they were generously given

away as gifts, and then acquired his name.

Edward Augustus Bowles was born in May 1865 in the house that was to be his

home all his life. Myddelton House was built in 1818 to replace Bowling Green

Lodge, which existed on the site at Bulls Cross near Enfield, Middlesex. He

was the fourth, and youngest, son, and perhaps a disappointment because his

parents had wanted a daughter (who arrived as their fifth child).

In early childhood he had whooping cough which left him with croup, and an eye

infection when he was eight affected his sight in one eye so badly he was

unable to judge distances and could not play most childhood games. He was

considered too weakly to attend school and was tutored at home with his young

sister. He was musical but played by ear as he was unable to read music.

Outdoor activities were limited, but planting bulbs and collecting insects

were important to him even before he went to Jesus College in Cambridge in

1884 to study theology.

Bowles was an eccentric in the best British tradition: there was never

electricity in the house in his time, and he went to the cinema only once in

his life, to see Disney's Snow White. His love of entomology endured into old

age, and his museum (which doubled as a pavilion for the cricket team) was

packed with natural objects including cabinets of carefully mounted and

labeled insects.

He was an accomplished artist, and he used watercolors to paint both botanical

studies of his crocus hybrids and other flowers, but also to create great

canvases in the Dutch master style.

Bowles did not join the RHS until 1897, but from then served it in an official

capacity for 50 years.

Bowles once wrote that his favorite time of the year was May, the month that

he was born: "If a fairy godmother or a talking fish offered me three wishes I

think one would be to have the clock stopped for six months on a fine morning

towards the end of May. Then, perhaps, I might have time to enjoy the supreme

moment of the garden."

Fate has a strange sense of humor and the talking fish stopped the clock for

Bowles for good on May 7, 1954.

(Geoff Stebbings is a freelance garden writer and head gardener at Thorpe Hall

in Peterborough. He was head gardener at Myddelton House from 1984-89. Anthony

C. Bleach coordinates the landscaping and horticulture degree and certificate

program at Naugatuck Valley Community-Technical College, Waterbury.)