A visit to Myddleton House

Last weekend, we visited Myddleton House in Enfield. We had a fantastic time - it is a beautiful garden full of history.

Myddleton House was the residence of E A Bowles in the 20th century and his legacy lives on through the immaculate gardens. The visitors centre at the entrance to the gardens has a great exhibition about Bowles, who is the most interesting of characters. They also have some very old ostrich statues and the remains of the original carthouse floor, both very well preserved.

The garden is 8 acres in all and you walk through it in a circular fashion, first taking a look at the conservatory (which had fruiting lemons in it when we were there and they smelled divine):

You then walk onto a path winding round to the pond, which is full of carp and water lillies:

The borders were filled with the most beautiful poppies, some red hot pokers and great clouds of frothy white flowers which looked like Gypsophilia:

The few Agapanthus I spotted were stunning:

However, for me, the Kitchen Garden was the highlight of the day. It was so very neat and ordered – so unlike our allotment! We chatted briefly to the Senior Kitchen Gardener who told us that they try to plant only the varieties that would have been around in Bowles’ lifetime and before. It’s such a wonderful thing to deal with heritage varieties – something I will certainly be doing more frequently. Having recently graduated in History, growing heritage plants seems to me to be respecting and preserving the history of plants through the ages.

I was really impressed with some of the original ideas that the kitchen gardeners had set up. One was the bird deterrent round the sweetcorn. Genius idea to fashion a "bird" out of a small stick with feathers glued on hung from bits of bamboo by a length of string:

We also spotted this sturdy looking trellis which had some sort of vine clambering up it:

Really good design and I'm thinking this might take the weight of squashes or melons.

Myddleton House gardens are beautiful, immaculately kept and keeping the heritage varieties alive. It is a dynamic garden which blends new ideas with old traditions and respects the history of the wonderful character of Bowles. And I was very surprised that it has free entry! What more can you ask for...