Outdoors & Nature

Myddelton House Gardens

The garden that E. A. Bowles, the Crocus King, made over fifty years at Enfield: a bed of lunatic plants, Enfield's old market cross and a Regency house on the New River, free.

GardensFree

Henry Carrington Bowles built the house in 1818 on part of the Forty Hall estate and named it for Hugh Myddelton, whose New River of 1613 ran through the grounds bringing London its drinking water. His descendant Edward Augustus Bowles inherited it in the 1890s and, self-taught, became one of the great gardeners of his century, the author of My Garden in Spring and its companions and the country's authority on crocuses, and from then until his death in 1954 he made the eight acres his laboratory. The Lunatic Asylum bed holds the contorted and the corkscrewed, plants he collected for their oddness; the market cross in the rose garden is Enfield's own, bought when the town replaced it; there is a Tulip Terrace, a kitchen garden, a rock garden being restored and a Victorian glasshouse in four climates. The Lee Valley Regional Park Authority has had the house as its headquarters since 1968.

Where

Bulls Cross, Enfield, EN2 9HG

Nearest station

Turkey Street · 12 min walk

Hours

Hours from the page that lists them, checked 8 September 2026.

NearbyOutdoors & Nature

• Trent Park1 hr 11 min walk
• Epping Forest1 hr 28 min walk
• Walthamstow Wetlands2 hr 3 min walk

NearbyOther Categories

• Forty Hall MuseumMuseums10 min walk
• EstersCoffee25 min walk
• Enfield MuseumMuseums38 min walk

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