Edward Augustus Bowles

[2] He developed an important garden at Myddelton House, his lifelong home at Bulls Cross in Enfield, Middlesex and his name has been preserved in many varieties of plant.

[9] He had wanted to enter the church, but family circumstances, including the death of a brother and sister from tuberculosis in a three-month period of 1887,[10] militated against this; so he remained at Myddelton and, in the words of one historian, "devoted himself to social work, painting, and natural history, particularly entomology".

[12] Many of the foreign expeditions were timed to mitigate the symptoms of acute hay fever, with Alpine or other mountainous regions being favoured destinations in late spring.

[18] The garden at Myddelton House, which has been subject to considerable renovation in the early 21st century, is open to the public and contains a museum dedicated to Bowles' life and work.

The old Enfield market cross was salvaged to become the centrepiece of the rose garden, while two lead ostriches, dating from 1724, that once stood beside the wisteria bridge, have been restored after years of vandalism and are now housed in the museum.

[21] More generally, he had an eye for unusual and uncommon plants, one of his favourites being yellowroot (Xanthorhiza simplicissima), which is rarely grown in British gardens, but whose "quaint beauty" he appreciated.

For example, in 1921 Sir Frederick Moore, director of the National Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin, near Dublin, Ireland, sent him a collection of hellebores that have thrived at Myddelton.

[27] Stories differ as to why Bowles named a particular snowdrop Galanthus plicatus 'Warham Rectory', but, according to one version, flowers of it were sent to him in 1916 by Charles Tilton Digby, Rector of Warham, Norfolk.

The preface to the first of these by Bowles' friend Reginald Farrer, with whom he often travelled abroad,[37] contained some comments about showy rock gardens which were taken as personal criticism by Sir Frank Crisp, the eccentric millionaire owner of Friar Park, Henley-on-Thames,[38] and Ellen Willmott, creator of a steep, rocky garden at Ventimiglia on the Italian Riviera,[39] who had known Gertrude Jekyll since 1873[40] and, like Bowles, was a leading figure in the RHS.

Farrer, who was widely published and candid about his likes and dislikes,[41] was thought to have had in mind in particular Crisp's Alpine garden which contained a miniature version of the Matterhorn[42] created from 20,000 tons of granite brought from Yorkshire.

[45] Ellen Willmott and Gertrude Jekyll were the first female recipients of the RHS's Victoria Medal of Honour, instituted in 1897 and, as noted, bestowed on Bowles in 1916.

Material that he had collected for a monograph on snowdrops and snowflakes was incorporated after his death in a book for the RHS by Sir Frederick Stern (1884–1967),[49] creator of Highdown Gardens in Worthing, West Sussex.

Bowles of Myddelton House Society, seeks to maintain interest in both the man and his work and, since the fiftieth anniversary of his death in 2004, has sponsored a biennial studentship in his name in conjunction with the RHS.

At its first annual general meeting in 1993, Andrew Parker-Bowles was elected president of the society, with Frances Perry (who died in October 1993) and Elizabeth Parker-Jervis as vice-presidents.

neopolitana),[60] and Bowles' golden sedge (Carex stricta 'Aurea'),[61] which he found on Wicken Fen[62] and has been described by another doyen of plantsmen, Christopher Lloyd, as "a plant to treasure, its colour changing in unexpected ways".

[67] In February 2011 a single bulb of the pure white snowdrop G. p. 'E A Bowles', discovered at Myddelton in 2002, was sold on the internet auction site eBay for a record price of £357.