April 2025

Published on April 1, 2025.

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Talks, Walks and Audley End.

The Celebration Study Day, 26 April 2025, fast approaches!

Join us! See last month's diary entry for your invitation poster and book your place by booking in via Eventbrite.

This day offers a chance to dig into the history - and beyond the pages of books. The first talk by the garden historian Kate Harwood allows us to see how the great Rivers Nursery fits into the tradition and necessity of growing fruit at home whether in an ordinary back garden or a grand country estate. Another talk concerns the vexed question of why there are so many fruit varieties - why the pages of historic Rivers catalogues are bursting with so many tempting kinds of apples, cherries, plums and pears, many many more than we find on our supermarket shelves today.


The length of the Rivers Orchard House at Audley End provided the space for a slow promenade.

Also sharing their insights are head gardeners from the grand estate of Audley End in Saffron Walden, who describe its varied Rivers connections. An Orchard House stands within the beautiful and fruitful walled kitchen garden in the grounds of the great mansion, a short walk from the kitchens where gardeners used to deliver produce daily. This glasshouse was built according to the specifications given by the nineteenth century Thomas Rivers in one of his popular handbooks produced to guide all fruit enthusiasts, whatever their place in the social scale. This Thomas, 1798 - 1877, had extended his interest in developing new varieties of fruit: he was considering new methods of cultivation, such as how to extend the productive period, particularly for tender stone fruit like peaches or apricots. The Orchard House was designed to meet that aim. You walk into the nineteenth century when you walk into this glasshouse. It was built in 1855 for Audley End’s owner, Lord Braybrooke, who also wished to use it as a ‘promenade house’, where he would be outdoors but protected from the chilly spring and autumn winds. How is this nineteenth century design holding up during our period of twenty-first century climate change? See the article by Gemma Sturges, Kitchen Garden Supervisor at Audley End, on our website in April.



The front page of Thomas Rivers’ Orchard House handbook of 1851. These popular books were published in editions of 1000 and came out year after year. (See RHSO Archives) This arresting image taken for a publicity article in the 1930s shows a Rivers daughter, perhaps Ursula, carrying out the necessary glasshouse task for fruit trees grown inside - pollinating with a paintbrush.

The Celebration Day ends with a guided walk in the restored Heritage Orchard to see how Rivers fruit is grown today.

Future Event

Adults Art Competition - ‘Celebrating Rivers Heritage Site and Orchard in Art’

This Rivers 300 event is for artists who have an interest in the natural world and orchards who want to celebrate Rivers orchard and its history in art and to use it to inspire.

Adults (people over the age of 18 in July 2025) will be invited to take part in this art competition.

The art competition conditions of entry and submission details are on the Rivers 300 website.



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