The Fry family still own Bridge End Garden and occasionally send the Friends old photographs and documents for our archive.  Always welcome, these all add to our knowledge of the Garden and the Gibson family.  When a bundle of letters and documents arrived, all quite delicate, we thought they should be made available online so others could see them.  We applied for a grant from the Essex Heritage Trust to have the documents digitised by Essex Record Office (ERO) and they kindly agreed to fund...

The Rose Garden at Bridge End Garden Yes, the roses are starting to come out at Bridge End Garden! It is earlier than usual but they are probably as confused as we are by the recent weather patterns. The roses on the trellis surrounding the Rose Garden, Rosa 'Madame Plantier', are going to be particularly eye catching. In February our horticultural advisor, Charlotte Power, led a training workshop on how to prune older climbing roses. The Garden Team and volunteers then carried out a major...

It is time to visit the Garden to see the laburnum arch in the Wilderness in flower. It is always a little later than laburnums in the town, probably because it is in a shady location overhung with trees. But it is still a magnificent show and when the sun is shining you can hear the bees buzzing. Laburnums come from the mountains of southern Europe from France to the Balkans and were introduced to the UK in 1560. A surprise this year has been the flowering of a wisteria in the Dutch...