July 2025

Published on July 1, 2025.

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Summer in Rivers Orchard

Fine new signboards will now greet you at the entrances to the Orchard. The board you encounter from the Hospital road is topped with bark, is as sturdy as a tree on its strong legs and looks as though it grew on the spot. It places you and gives you notice of what’s happening. The intriguing etching of fruit on the wood is created by pyrography - an art of burning a design into a surface with a heated point. A number of Orchard volunteers were involved in this project of building new large signposts - one as described at the entrance off the Rivers Hospital roundabout and another, larger and equally as rugged and attractive, holding much information at the other entrance from Brook End and the fields.



Two sturdy new signposts - from the Hospital roundabout and from Brook End.


During the maintenance working party the first Sunday of June, there were some volunteers clearing the essential ditch that drains excess water from the ground and keeps the soil healthy. Others were tending the trees. Surrounded by the vibrant green of early summer leaves, the fruit is taking on various characteristic shapes- apples rounding, pears elongating, plums becoming oval.


Volunteers working deep in the ditch!



Fruit thriving on the branches among the leaves.


The Rivers 300 Adult Art Competition ends on Thursday, July 10 with an Exhibition and Prize giving in the Council Chamber, Sawbridgeworth, from 6.15 to 7.30. All welcome! Book a place on Eventbrite. Find details on the Art Competition page.

With the RHS Chelsea flower show still vivid in our memories, see the article on our website this month about Thomas Rivers and the Royal Horticultural Society. There Rivers may have first encountered Darwin as both were Committee chairmen. What followed was a 10 year correspondence between the two thinkers, the horticulturalist and the scientist.

Our Audley End connection resulted in an invitation to Elizabeth Waugh to write an article Notes and Queries: Rivers 300: A celebration of the Rivers Nursery, Sawbridgeworth, Hertforshire about the Rivers 300 project and Nursery legacy published in the the distinguished and scholarly journal Garden History, Journal of the Gardens Trust Volume 53:1, Summer 2025.

Rivers 300 also supported the Hertfordshire Library Service in celebrating 100 years of service with an exhibition in the Bishop Stortford Library on the 8 June.



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