As Lydiard House closes its walled garden doors on another successful NGS Open for Charity Sunday, SPL takes a trip to neighbouring Cirencester on the trail of a once lost daffodil. The Bowly family roots are dug deep in Cirencest er. From millers and brewers to local politicians and a slavery abolionist, the Bowly’s have left their stamp on the town. But one Bowly wife had family roots of a different kind – daffodil roots. Born in 1851 Sarah Aldam Bowly nee Backhouse, like her husband, came from a Quaker family. Her father, William Backhouse began work in the Newcastle branch of the family banking business, but his first love was horticulture and in particular, daffodils. Sarah and her four brothers, the children of William’s second marriage to Catherine Aldam, grew up at St. John’s Hall, near Wolsingham Co. Durham where her father owned 669 acres, an ideal setting for William’s studies and where he wrote his major horticultural work, N...