Alfred Swatton & The Kitchen Gardens

When Alfred Swatton came to Myddelton House from Kew Gardens, he and his family lived in Augustus Lodge, just outside the Kitchen Garden. Swatton worked here as head gardener for over 40 years – despite the fact that he and Bowles did not always see eye to eye.

Once a week Bowles would walk down into the Kitchen Garden for an update on how things were going. Fruit and veg weren’t the only things that were grown here: cut flowers were also grown in the Kitchen Garden. These were picked for the house, and for the local Church, where Bowles was churchwarden for many years. Cornflowers and Gladiolus were favourites, but there was also a large bed of white trumpeted, regal lilies. One gardener, Charlie Smith, remembered that Bowles always made a point of stopping to sniff the lilies . He would walk on, totally unaware that they had left his nose a pollen stained orange colour. 

There used to be two vast compost heaps in the kitchen garden: one for fresh material and one for mature material. In winter it was not unusual to see four frozen gardeners standing in the steaming mature heap, warming their feet