November 2025

Published on November 1, 2025.

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What a day! A special Rivers300 Apple Day celebration, October 4, 2025!

A full report of the Rivers300 Apple Day (2025) can be found on our website.

Bright sunshine! Gales! Undaunted, the people came and continued coming from 10 am to pick the abundant beautiful fruit. They gathered for themselves and for the Rivers team to crate and send for pressing into juice to sell in the next year. The site had been mown to make access easier and the fallen fruit raked out of the paths and heaped under the trees - available for chutney makers and in the quiet days to come, attract wildlife. There were vistas in all directions. The wind nipped our ears and stirred up our spirits!


After a morning’s activity, the crates are full of carefully harvested fruit, ready to be sent for pressing into apple juice.

Further excitement came at the fruit identification table as there was lively discussion about the important discovery of a new Rivers apple cultivar. Peter Laws who is a leading figure in the FruitID organisation, set up a table as he does every year to answer questions from those bringing in their own unknown fruit to be identified. Beside him, as every year was Eugene Keddy, who has done so much to clarify the names found in the restored Rivers Orchard. This year he set up a whole assembly of named fruit. However, significantly in the historic Rivers300 year, a new lost Rivers cultivar, Early Rivers, has been discovered in Wales and Copenhagen. Peter brought a sample and was able to tell its story. He has entered this lost cultivar into FruitID in the usual format. What a find!


An intense discussion at the apple identification table is based on fruit and leaf.

Apple Day, 2025, was another great event in this Rivers300 year.

The Rivers 300 Children’s Art Competition.

Please submit your work by email from lst to 5th Nov 2025!

Visible on Apple Day, Lanier Pole, the Competition Organiser moved around among those reaching up into the branches or holding baskets of gathered apples. She urged talented young people to try their luck in the competition and explained how easy it is to send their work by email to the judges.


The Children’s Art Competition organiser describes how to send in entries.

A Rivers Tapestry

Yet another story about the Sawbridgeworth Rivers legacy has been told by Hazel Mead. She has completed a cross stitch wool tapestry to cover a kneeler in Gt St Mary in Sawbridgeworth. Blessed in the church at the Harvest Festival Service on 5 October, it depicts fruit in the Orchard. The connection between the Nursery in the nineteenth century as the firm grew prosperous and the Church is evident. Not only do the Church records discuss the Rivers family contributions for rebuilding and other works but there is an Arch stop portrait in stone of Henry Rivers, brother of Nursery Director Thomas Rivers, near the chancel. Hazel’s tapestry is further dedicated to David Mead, her husband, who worked with Hazel over many years both in the Orchard and to support the Sawbridgeworth church community.


The Rivers tapestry made by Hazel Mead for a kneeler in Gt St Mary is now in place within the Church.

Audley End Connection

As part of the Rivers300 celebrations, we renewed the ongoing connection between the Rivers Nursery and Audley End House when the Rivers300 committee visited the kitchen garden there that houses a Thomas Rivers Orchard House. Find out more here.

Article

This month's article is an interview with Eric Buckmaster, former Environment Cabinet Member on Hertfordshire County Council and long term RHSO volunteer, about how Orchards fit into the County Council's environmental strategy.

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