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Apples for all: wildlife and us

We are having a good year for apples and hope you will come and enjoy them with us, on Sunday, at our Apples and Bees Day. We have a good picking of Bramleys for sale and volunteers have taken some for jellies, mincemeat and cakes for the Open Day. Visito ...

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A sunny Thursday at last

What a tonic it was, to enjoy sunshine and a little warmth in the Italian Garden and the walled kitchen garden this Thursday, after all the rain. The Gardens are very boggy and it has been impossible for Roger and team to re-lay the path by the gate. But ...

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Stocking up

What a lovely Open Day we had last Sunday – we welcomed many first time visitors to the Gardens as well as regulars and the rain held off till nearly closing time. The Woodland Trust and Essex Wildlife Trust volunteers enjoyed talking to visitors to ...

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Another little stepping stone

Our next big restoration project will be the balustrading around the lilypond. But while we are putting the plans for that into place and fundraising for it, we have funded the laying of a few additional slabs to make it easier to cross from the restored ...

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The battle against box moths

Box tree caterpillars can eat their way through all the leaves on box bushes/trees and there can be 2 or 3 caterpillar hatchings a year. The moths were first reported in Britain in 2007 and are now widespread in London and the South East, so we have been ...

laburnam April 2020

The stunning laburnam walk

The laburnum walk is looking fabulous, with cow parsley wafting along the edge of the path. These are common laburnums. Unfortunately the Gardens’ county champion Laburnam Alpinum, which used to tower over the archive building, fell last year – ...

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Appley Dapply!

In the dappled shade on a glorious September day, Thelma finished beautifying the jams and jellies today, ready for the Apple Day on Sunday. You might call her Appley Dapply! Cressing Temple Barns’ gardening volunteers visited for the day, bringing ...

japanese monks august 2019

Japanese style gardening

Is Steph channelling the Japanese gardeners that Monty Don met, who were removing grass from moss gardens blade by blade? The monks and the rest of the Gardens are looking fit for visitors on Sunday for our first ever celebration  of our Japanese Garden h ...

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Stunning!

Open Day visitors on Sunday will love the walled garden and the Italian garden – they are looking stunning! The restoration of the stone steps is nearly finished too. Maggie, our archivist, has also done great work in digging out new stories and pic ...

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The periploca up close

Our periploca graeca, also known as a silk vine, is precious to us because we believe it once ranged over one of Peto’s two treillage pergolas across the croquet lawn. So we were thrilled when one of our talented volunteers did a lovely painting of ...