Hardy Plant Society

Look who is in our garden - Edward Kent Balls (1892-1984)

I first discovered Edward Kent Balls through a lovely little plant called Sisyrinchium ‘E.K. Balls’. We were gathering the plants for Chelsea when one member came and said he was sorry that his dianthus had not come into flower but he offered instead five lovely plants of the Sisyrinchium. It is short with quite large, purple flowers. It does not seem to set seed and is therefore not the nuisance that some Sisyrinchium are.

Edward Kent Balls was born in 1892 and was a Quaker. After the first World War he was a relief worker in the Balkans and Russia where he met and married his charming wife, Natalie Timonova. When he was invalided home in 1925 he joined Clarence Elliott at the Six Hills Nursery. Although he had no botanical training his astute mind picked up the threads very quickly and within a couple of years he had become the nursery’s chief rock garden builder. He was in charge of building the rock garden at Exbury in the New Forest, where they used 200 tons of rock. This rock garden housed Lionel de Rothschild’s growing collection of dwarf rhododendrons. After a few years with the nursery Edward decided he really wanted to be a plant hunter. His first plant collecting expedition was to Persia in 1932 with Dr Paul Guiseppi.

In the first 3 editions of a new magazine called “My Garden” published from January 1934 Edward Balls wrote about the plant hunting expedition he had taken to Anatolia, with Dr. W. Balfour of Cambridge, in the spring of 1933. He had decided to visit this area because, although Kew had many herbarium examples, it had been difficult to obtain live plant material from this troubled region. When, in 1932, he had approached the Turkish authorities for permission to travel and collect plants in the eastern districts he believed that they would be granted the necessary permissions. However, when they arrived in Angora this was not the case and they quickly found out why so little flora from Eastern Anatolia had found its way into English gardens. The military were in control and they had little time for a “scientific man who pokes about in the hills and out-of-way places looking for plants or insects”. They spent many weeks struggling with officialdom but did manage to do some foraging. On a train journey to Tarsus he describes seeing the banks covered in yellow Cornus Mas and millions of anemones in shades of pink, blue, mauve or purple and in the swamps & bogs Leucojum vernum. As they passed through the narrow gorges they saw great patches of purple or lavender aubretias splashed against the grey rock together with Arabis albida shinning brilliantly in the sun. Military red tape cut short their stay in Tarsus and they returned to the Angora. They then drove across central Anatolia in a very over-loaded car, facing all the normal vicissitudes which seem to befall serious plant hunters, and saw many interesting plants including various irises.

He wrote these articles in a very easy and entertaining manner and was obviously a very knowledgeable man with a sense of humour who loved good food. He continued his plant collecting throughout the 1930s. Great gardeners such as E.B. Anderson and Sir Frederick Stern subscribed to his expeditions. In 1939 he went to South America for the Imperial Agricultural Bureaux to seek both cultivated and species potatoes for research. He then went on an extensive lecture tour in the USA but found, because of the outbreak of war, he was unable to return to England. He stayed in the USA working for the British Purchasing Commission and then did relief work in Europe again. In 1947 he joined the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in California.

Joe Elliott, Clarence’s son, said he was a gentle, unassuming man, extremely well read, and for all his diffidence, the owner of a very acute mind and an iron will who also had an ironic sense of quiet humour. After he retired from the Botanic Garden he and his wife went to live in Spain but finally returned to live in England in 1967 to be near their family. He died aged 92 in 1984. One of the most popular of his introductions is Geranium psilostemon AGM but others included Campanula betulifolia, Epigaea gaultheroides, Cyclamen cillicum var intaminatum and Rubus trilobus. Plants named for him are Gaueria pumila ‘E.K. Balls’, Primula allionii ‘E.K. Balls‘, Verbena ballsii and Verbascum ballsianum.

Main references:	My Garden – 1934/5 – Volumes 1-3
	Severn Gardens- E.B. Anderson Michael Joseph
	RHS Journal Vol 110 May 1985

Click on drawing to open a larger image (in new window)

Text by Jennifer Harmer, drawing by Sue Ward.

These articles were originally published in the HPS Journal.