< Back 6. Lunatic Asylum and Hollow Lawn 6. Lunatic Asylum and Hollow Lawn Artist Name 00:00 / 02:14 Narrator: When Bowles was young a vast clump of evergreens occupied this area. It was the sort of planting you might see in a London square. Laurels grew here. In showery weather they gave off a smell that reminded Bowles of dirty dog. Spotted Aucubas and Privet also grew here. Bowles thought it was all quite dismal, so he had the mass of greenery cleared away and blocks of Kentish ragstone were put down to form two rocky mounds and irregularly shaped beds. The idea was that this would be his Japanese garden. – And some cherries and bamboos were planted. But before he developed the theme any further, Bowles decided Japanese-style gardens had become too fashionable. He was put off the idea when giant toads, pagodas and jingling glass bird-scarers were all the rage at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Great Spring Show. Despite his misgivings, the Wisterias and Magnolias that grow around here still give this area a Japanese feel at times. MUSIC: fade in and run under from ‘some strange and abnormal plans By the time Bowles gave up on the idea of a Japanese garden, he had acquired the corkscrew Hazel you can see growing here. It was given to him by Canon Ellacombe. Some strange and abnormal plants were discovered by Bowles himself. These included a pigmy form of Elder. Another, the Plymouth Strawberry, was a variety of woodland strawberry that was first described in the 17thcentury. You can also see Hedgehog Holly, or curly leaved holly, growing here. In his book My Garden in Spring , Bowles wrote: Voice of Bowles : The freaks have increased in number and are now under the protection of the cherries and bamboos. Narrator: As a result of growing these gnarled, twisted and unusual plants, this area of the garden became known as the Lunatic Asylum. MUSIC FADE UP ON MUSIC and OUT.

< Back 9. Tulip Terrace and Bowles Memories 9. Tulip Terrace and Bowles Memories Artist Name 00:00 / 02:49 Narrator: Bowles was very keen on tulips. Above all he preferred tulips that flowered in late April and May. In his book, My Garden in Spring, he wrote: Voice of Bowles: I have long ago lost every scrap of affection for the early-flowering garden varieties that are still the most conspicuous Tulips in most public parks and many gardens. Narrator: In Bowles’ day the beds in this tulip terrace were planted with single colours. Care was taken to make sure there was no clash of colours. As soon as flowering was over the developing seedpods were snapped off to encourage the bulbs to ripen quickly. This meant they could be lifted in time for the planting out of summer bedding. Bowles liked to fill individual beds with plants of the same type. In some he grew succulent plants, in others he grew Salvia splendens – or scarlet sage – which gave a brilliant red focal point to the terrace. The salvias Bowles grew were taller than the ones that are widely grown today. Another of his favourite plants was heliotrope , or cherry pie, as we will hear from Bryan Hewitt: Bryan Hewitt: he had a large collection of species tulips which he would put in those beds and … then after the tulips were finished they would have summer bedding in, ..which Cherry pie… was one of the plants he used to famously grow in there - that’s very sweet-smelling.. ; Narrator: Scent was an important feature in the garden. Bowles memories Narrator: When Bowles was a child he enjoyed rolling down the grassy slope here. – But only when his ever-protective governess was not looking! The patch below the terrace on the south bank of the New River was always one of his favourite areas. He remembered it as “the sunny plot”. When he took the garden over there were some crocuses growing here. Crocuses were to become his “first garden love”. Among gardeners he was known as the Crocus King, and with good reason. Maurice Mantle, a gardener at Myddelton in the 1930s, remembered six or seven hundred different bulbs growing in the kitchen garden’s cold frames. Many of these had been sent to Bowles by horticultural gardens, and some of them were extremely rare. Bowles was proud of the fact that his was possibly the most comprehensive crocus collection in the world. At the western end of the kitchen garden wall, next to the steps, you can see where, in 1887 Bowles, his brother, Henry Ferryman Bowles, and a Cambridge friend, TAH, carved their initials into the bricks.

< Back 12. Wild Garden 12. Wild Garden Artist Name 00:00 / 01:45 Narrator: Bowles believed that ‘one might as reasonably expect figs from thistles as good fern fronds in this dry garden’. However, a visit to a winter meeting of the RHS and encouragement from a friend persuaded him to clear an area on the north side and plant the ‘promised cartload of treasures’ his friend had given him. The bed prospered for some years before it was eventually abandoned. Bryan Hewitt can tell us some more about this wild garden. Bryan Hewitt: Mr Bowles doesn’t give an explanation quite what the idea of the thing was in the wild garden, but we take it to mean it was an area of minimal maintenance. Narrator: When Bowles was in charge, shrubs, crocus, colchicum and snowdrops grew here. Some of the older planting was destroyed during the great storm in 1987. Here is Bryan Hewitt again: Bryan Hewitt: there was a vast … black poplar … and that had been planted by Sam Howard in 1911. In 1959 I know it was recorded as being a height of 111ft and it was such a magnificent tree that it was recorded in Alan Mitchell’s book about trees of note in the British Isles. But that came down in the storm and it fell squarely across a nice big, expensive Haddenstone pot which had just been put there as a centrepiece in the wild garden; it smashed it to pieces. And also in that area was some box trees that were at least a hundred years old. Narrator: On a positive note, the storm created an open area that let in more sunlight to give the current gardeners new planting opportunities.

< Back 8. Kitchen Garden 8. Kitchen Garden Artist Name 00:00 / 01:27 Narrator: MUSIC: Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses Levasseur to fade in at Once a week the cook had a conference Fruit and vegetables have probably been grown in this area since the 16thcentury. Even in Bowles’ day the house was virtually self sufficient - with a strict rotation of crops. Potatoes, swedes, kale, lettuce, turnips and cabbage all grew here. As well as vegetables there were trained fruit trees, which supplied the house with apples, pears, plums, peaches and nectarines. Once a week the cook had a “conference” with Bowles, to discuss the meal requirements for the week ahead. The Head Gardener was issued with a list of fruit and veg, which an under-gardener gathered together and took to the kitchens by eleven o’clock each morning. But things did not always run so smoothly! Alfred Swatton, the head gardener here for over 40 years, kept an eagle eye on his kitchen garden. Early one morning he caught Mina, the Austrian cook, taking his best apples from the tree near his house. MUSIC: Continues and runs under scene Short scene: Male voice shouts SFX sound of feet running across gravel MALE VOICE Oi, you! What do you think you’re doing? Narrator: He was livid, and stormed out in his pyjamas to give her a piece of his mind! She never did it again.

< Back 5. New River Lawn 5. New River Lawn Artist Name 00:00 / 01:38 This is the part of the garden that has changed the most since Bowles’s time. Then the main feature was the river, as it curved round, passing under the two bridges. As you looked towards the Tulip Terrace, the river was flanked on the left by a narrow grass verge. It was here that Bowles planted his main collection of irises. MUSIC: (Reprise) Hide & Seek Rag (McConnell - ATV 8B 43) FADE IN AND UNDER To the left of the Wisteria Bridge are three old yew trees. They would have looked more striking in Bowles’ day than they do now. One of the winter jobs he assigned to the Bowles Boys was to peel off any loose bark and scrub the trunks until they glowed a rich crimson. Peter Deering remembers it well. MUSIC: FADE UP FOR A MOMENT THEN UNDER THE FOLLOWING AND FADE OUT ON LAST PIECE OF SYNCH Peter Deering: ,… the drill was to get a bucket of water and scrubbing brushes and you would just scrub and scrub it away and it would just flake off and scrub it clean all shiny bright. It was really great fun. … Narrator: This would have added a dash of colour to the garden in wintertime. It was an idea Bowles got from a visit to Glasnevin Botanic Gardens in Ireland. A Poncirus , or hardy orange, grows opposite the Tulip Terrace. In Bowles’ time it was a rarity. He was given it as a seed from Canon Ellacombe, one of his first gardening mentors. It was Ellacombe who encouraged Bowles to join the Royal Horticultural Society, which played such an important part in his life in later years.

< Back 11. Tulip Terrace 11. Tulip Terrace Artist Name 00:00 / 01:42 Narrator: Bowles was very keen on tulips. Above all he preferred tulips that flowered in late April and May. In his book, My Garden in Spring, he wrote: Voice of Bowles: I have long ago lost every scrap of affection for the early-flowering garden varieties that are still the most conspicuous Tulips in most public parks and many gardens. Narrator: In Bowles’ day the beds in this tulip terrace were planted with single colours. Care was taken to make sure there was no clash of colours. As soon as flowering was over the developing seedpods were snapped off to encourage the bulbs to ripen quickly. This meant they could be lifted in time for the planting out of summer bedding. Bowles liked to fill individual beds with plants of the same type. In some he grew succulent plants, in others he grew Salvia splendens – or scarlet sage – which gave a brilliant red focal point to the terrace. The salvias Bowles grew were taller than the ones that are widely grown today. Another of his favourite plants was heliotrope , or cherry pie, as we will hear from Bryan Hewitt: Bryan Hewitt: he had a large collection of species tulips which he would put in those beds and … then after the tulips were finished they would have summer bedding in, ..which Cherry pie… was one of the plants he used to famously grow in there - that’s very sweet-smelling.. ; Narrator: Scent was an important feature in the garden.

< Back Exotic plants Exotic plants Artist Name 00:00 / 01:42 Narrator: The gardeners at Myddelton continue to follow in Bowles’s footsteps. The beds on the south side of the Irishman’s Shirt are used to experiment with the types of plants that can be grown here. Let’s hear from Bryan Hewitt: Bryan Hewitt: Well, Bowles was very keen to see what he could get away with growing; what would come through the winter in the garden… A lot of tender stuff would be put in there and I think he was a bit like his friend Professor Balfour of the Edinburgh Botanical Garden, who … said that “I never believe that a plant is not hardy until I’ve killed it”. So I suspect he got through a lot of plants through testing them. … We’ve got some bananas in there at the moment. … And we’ve got another plant called Albizia julibrissins which is in the leguminous family which has lovely pincushion-like flowers. He also grew a banksias rose, which is slightly tender, on the Irishman’s Shirt. He wrote in his book My Garden in Summer … in 1914 that he had hoped that one day it would eventually encircle the ball on the top of the column in the corner ... …I think Mr Bowles liked people to think they’d come to another country when they came to this garden, with the wonderful exotic things; in his day… it was a very, very famous garden. And some of these plants, which are common now, had not been seen before. I would like to recreate, somehow, the magic that he had here by growing challenging plants and constantly pushing the boundaries.

< Back Bryan Hewitt on the Rock Garden restoration work Bryan Hewitt on the Rock Garden restoration work Artist Name 00:00 / 01:22 Narrator: The Rock Garden is built on a steep clay bank that was originally constructed by Sir Hugh Myddelton, the founder of the New River. The bank shored up the river as it looped round and flowed through the garden. Bryan Hewitt is involved with the rock garden’s restoration: Bryan Hewitt: The paths have been the first part of that restoration. Establishing where the paths were from the Kentish ragstone edging as a guide and then they will be restored with hogging hopefully…, as a surface to walk on. Excavations revealed the true shape of the ponds that were …down there. … The large one was clay-lined – and then that flowed into a concrete-lined … pond…And then that would overflow into a lead-lined pond. … And a treefrog he brought back from one of his foreign trips was released there and he used to love to sit on the edge of the pond and it could be identified, when it couldn’t be seen, by it’s distinctive croak. It was there for a good couple of years before it disappeared. So these are features we hope to eventually restore and get going again. But they were fed from a naturally occurring spring in the middle of … the alpine meadow, which has since dried up we believe. So maybe water will have to be artificially bought down there to restore that aspect.

< Back 6. Pergola Garden 6. Pergola Garden Artist Name 00:00 / 02:01 When Bowles first had a Pergola built here, its oak frame was made from trees that were grown on the estate. But the wood has long since rotted away. The pergola that stands here now was put up in the 1980s. Roses, honeysuckle, wisteria, and low growing herbaceous plants grow here[OU1] . A second smaller pergola is devoted to vines. The formal Rose Garden was created in Edwardian times. At its heart stands Enfield’s old Market Cross. - Bowles persuaded his father to buy it from a builder’s yard in 1906, for just a few pounds. He wrote about it: Voice of Bowles: it came here for a quiet time among the roses and makes a splendid support and background for that lovely single-flowered climber Rosa ‘Anemone . Narrator: Bryan Hewitt remembers that when renovation work started here in the 1980s, this area was a tangled mess, with plants’ shoots, or suckers, cropping up all over the place: Bryan Hewitt: The rose garden was in a terrible state when I came here in 1982. There were suckers from a nearby poplar coming up through the… path; all around the beds and the rose garden and all the box hedging had been ripped out and there weren’t many roses left from Bowles’ time and those that were there were not properly identified and some had reverted to suckers, so they had to be ripped up and removed. And so we put in a new layer of soil, and replanted with some varieties that were around in Bowles’ time. To add interest to the garden we do know that Bowles planted phlocks and salvias and other perennial plants like peonies, because he didn’t want just roses in the garden he wanted to increase the seasons of interest when the roses weren’t flowering.

< Back 3. Pond area and Conservatory 3. Pond area and Conservatory Artist Name 00:00 / 01:46 Narrator: The pond is not a natural feature of the garden. It was created when Myddelton House was built in the early nineteenth century. The heart-shaped area formed when workmen were excavating for the soil and gravel that were used to create the raised ground on which the house stands. The pond was originally lined with clay to make it watertight. - This process is known as ‘puddling’. But there must have been a hole somewhere – because the pond always leaked. A spur of the New River used to run through the garden and the pond was topped up from it, through a pipe with a stopcock. But this water proved unsuitable for some aquatic plants, which failed to thrive. Bowles wrote: Voice of Bowles: The New River water comes chiefly from chalk wells of great depth, and therefore is hard enough to look blue, and cold enough in summer to make you look blue, if you were in it for long . Narrator: Because of this Bowles had to plant tougher British native species in the pond - many of which he collected on visits to the Norfolk Broads and the Cambridgeshire Fens. But some water lilies grew well here. A former gardener, Charlie Smith remembered how the lilies grew so thickly that ducks could run from one side of the pond to the other without getting their feet wet. After the New River was filled in in the 1960s the pond all but dried up. Since then it has been completely re-lined – this time with rubber lining. Now the water stays inside it!

< Back Bowles Boys Bowles Boys Artist Name 00:00 / 02:30 Narrator: Peter Deering was seven when he first came to play here. Peter Deering: … as I lived just on the hill outside the gates here I used this garden and the fields around as the playground. MUSIC: Hide & Seek Rag (McConnell - ATV 8B 43) FADE IN AND UNDER Narrator: Bowles was happy for Peter and his local friends to come here and play games or fish. In winter, when the river and the lake froze over, they skated. Peter Deering: … All the equipment was kept in a cupboard under the stairs here, including the skates …And there was always a rush … to get the best bit of gear, especially if you could get Bowles’s own skates, which were permanently fixed to a pair of boots (otherwise you had to get a pair that you clamped onto your shoes). MUSIC: Up and end Narrator: But it was not all fun and games. The boys, usually about three of them, were put to use, helping out in the garden, as Peter remembers. Peter Deering: ... we would just come over anytime, morning or afternoon, and the drill was to come in, pull three weeds from the front drive here, which was a custom for everyone that came no matter who they were. SFX: A SINGLE WHISTLER Peter Deering: And we’d walk in the front door and whistle, and if Bowles was in the house he’d whistle back. and if he didn’t whistle back then we’d proceed into the garden, whistling until we heard a whistle back. And then we’d join in with whatever he was doing: weeding, replanting or just trying to find something. SFX: A SINGLE WHISTLER & A WHISTLED RESPONSE [……..] You’d walk though the garden with him and he’d say oh there’s such-and-such a thing here that should just be coming into bloom… and sure enough there would be… he always walked with his hands behind his back … And his coat, a raincoat generally, which had long torn strips hanging from it, tied up in a knot at the bottom and a slouchy, trilby hat. Generally he wore a pair of flannel trousers and a tweed jacket. He always wore… a bow tie.

< Back 10. Wisteria Bridge 10. Wisteria Bridge Artist Name 00:00 / 01:17 Narrator: This bridge gets its name from the fine old wisteria that grows here. Its trunk has become thicker and more characterful since Bowles’ time. But even then this plant was special. In 1941 Bowles wrote that the previous year it had been ‘the star turn of the garden’. It already covered about 25 yards of wall and had climbed to the top of the yew tree. When it flowers it is a beautiful sight from the road. One passer-by was overheard telling a friend, “It’s what they call a Blueburnum”. The wisteria is most striking in May, when it is covered in long, pendulous stems of lilac flowers. By late summer or autumn it bears a crop of what look like imitation runner beans. These are seed pods, which are covered in fine, short hairs that all point downwards. When they are seen from above the pods appear silver, but from below we see only the tips of the hairs and they look green. In Bowles’s time two lead ostriches stood here. Now you can see these on display in the Visitors’ Centre.