Wesley Kerr

Wesley Kerr:

I’m Wesley Kerr… I’m a very keen horticulturalist and I come into the Myddelton House story because I have the honour to chair the London Committee of the Heritage Lottery Fund. … The Bowles story at Myddelton House when it came to my committee in September 2008 was immediately electrifying when I read the paper.

...This is one of the great gardens that was created in the last century… I think of …. Myddelton House as one of London’s most poetic horticultural plantations: it speaks to us of landscape, of river, of man working with nature, of a wonderful warm interesting human being. It’s chocca full of incredible plants which have something new to say to us every week because the plants are constantly evolving as they emerge from the soil.

… Bowles,… or Gus as I prefer to call him, was one of the great plants-people of the last 150 years. By the time he was 30 he’d collected over 125 different crocus varieties. He grew all the possible crocuses that will survive in the British Isles,…

I think that one new, special place is going to be the brand new glasshouse which is going to be one of the great glasshouses of London and will bring back Bowles’ spirit. … I think that the buildings, the artefacts are as important in creating the magic of Myddelton House as the plants. …