In 1925, Alick Trelawny-Ross engaged Old Shirburnian Major John Bowater Vernon (Abbey House 1899-1900) to create a garden for him at Lyon House.
Earlier that year, John had won the Silver Cup at the Chelsea Flower Show for the most attractively laid-out formal garden. The garden, which was admired by King George V and Queen Mary when they visited the Show, featured a sunken garden surrounded by trellis. At the centre of the garden was a small pond fed by a constant trickle of water from the mouth of an Italian mask. Surrounding the pond was a flagged terrace and deep herbaceous borders planted with bold clumps of colourful flowers, with rambler roses and flowering creepers covering the trellis.
So, who was John Bowater Vernon?
John was born on 29 March 1884, the eldest son of Thomas Bowater Vernon (1850-1911) and Kate (née Dicker) (1857-1935) of ‘Hanbury’, Manor Road, Wallington, Surrey. John’s father was an inventor and patentee of stationery-related accessories, including the Ceres vertical system of filing and the Ceres writing copier. John was educated firstly at Knyveton Court School in Bournemouth, which was run by his aunt Miss Euphemia Bellingham Vernon, and in January 1899 he joined Sherborne School and boarded at Abbey House. But John’s time at Sherborne was for some reason short-lived and he left just over a year later in April 1900, having not progressed above the third form His destination in the leaving register was recorded as ‘uncertain’.
By 1911, John was living at 13, Maclise Road in Kensington and employed as secretary to his father’s company, Ceres Ltd. The following year, on 23 March 1912, he was married at St Matthew’s church, Hammersmith, to New Zealander Evangeline Hampton (1883-1962), a clerk at a patent agents.
At the outbreak of the First World War, John enlisted in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR), serving as a Lieutenant Commander with the Air Service. In January 1917 he was appointed Naval Forwarding Officer in charge of all stores at the Divisional Naval Transport Office (DNTO) in Dover, and in February 1918 he was moved to ‘S’ (Stores) duties at Dunkirk. The following year he transferred to the RAF and was appointed Major.
John’s war service evidently allowed him to collect some items which in 1918 he donated to the School Museum, these consisted of a German hand grenade rifle clip, tiles from the Zeebrugge Mole and a piece of HMS Vindictive. He also gave £5 5s to the School’s War Memorial Fund. Interestingly, that same year Major Edward Bamford VC, DSO, donated to the School a notice board from Zeebrugge Mole. Unfortunately, the School Museum was destroyed when Sherborne was bombed on 30 September 1940 and none of these items survive.
From 1 February to 31 July 1919, John served as acting Vice-Consul at Dunkirk, a posting which put him in contact with the parents of Peter Clifton Richards who, at John’s suggestion, was sent in 1919 to Sherborne Prep School and then to Sherborne School where like John he boarded at Abbey House.
Quite what became of John between August 1919 and 1925 is a bit of a mystery. In the 1921 census he described himself as an artist, and on 4 October 1921 he joined the Old Shirburnian Society’s Executive Committee of the newly adopted Sherborne ‘B’ Company of the Southwark Cadets. In a newspaper report published in the Westminster Gazette on 23 May 1925, John claimed that after demobilisation he was reduced to begging for money, singing with a barrel organ on the streets of London. However, in 1923 with a capital of half a crown he set himself up as a landscape gardener. He had evidently always enjoyed gardening and during the war had kept the men under his command supplied with fresh vegetables. With his brother Aubrey Stuart Vernon (1899-1973) (Lyon House 1913-15), John set up Vernon Bros., garden architects, at Pembroke Works, Pembroke Villas, Kensington, W8, employing ex-service men, many of whom had lost limbs in the war. Among their first jobs was the western end of Pembroke Square, which had become an unsightly wilderness, and which they converted into a show garden with terraces, pools, fountains, rockeries, crazy paving paths and colourful planting. This resulted in them being employed by many residents in Pembroke Square and Holland Park to lay out their front gardens which changed the whole appearance of the area.
In 1924, John had visited the Chelsea Flower Show and decided that the following year he would enter a garden of his own, with the result that in 1925 he won the Silver Cup for the most attractively laid-out formal garden.
Alick Trelawny-Ross, the housemaster of Lyon House, had joined Sherborne School as a pupil in the same term as John Bowater Vernon in 1899 and they had met subsequently at Old Shirburnian dinners. In 1914, Alick took over as housemaster of Lyon House, which had been built in 1911 on a plot of land in Richmond Road known as ‘Sherrin’s Field’, and was ‘keen to encourage a natural and pleasant use of the garden’ which would ‘add to the pleasures of an occasional respite from hectic effort.’ Alick was therefore delighted that following John’s success at the Chelsea Flower Show he was able to secure his help to design and create a special garden for Lyon House.
John’s design for the garden at Lyon House included elements of his prize-winning garden at the Chelsea Flower Show, including a sunken pond surrounded by flag stones and herbaceous borders. He also created a circular rose garden with at its centre a sundial copied from one erected at Windsor Castle by King Charles II.
John’s garden at Lyon House was an immediate success with the boys and staff of Lyon House and much of his design survives today.
John Bowater Vernon died at his home, 10, Pitts Head Mews, Park Lane, Westminster, on 19 September 1952 and was buried on 24 September 1952 at Brompton Cemetery (grave no. 95445).
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