Rivers Nursery: Bearing the best fruit
The garden at Audley End was stocked with many plants from the famous Rivers nursery, 15 miles away in Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire. This nursery, first established in 1725 by John Rivers and run by successive generations of the Rivers family, was one of Britain’s largest commercial nurseries in Victorian times. It was particularly famous for its fruit and rose varieties when under the management of Thomas Rivers (1798–1877), who also designed the original orchard house at Audley End.
The Rivers Nursery
At the height of its prosperity in the late 19th century Rivers nursery used about 400 acres of land. This included large fields filled with plants for sale, orchards for growing fruit trees as well as a large number of glasshouses for more delicate plants.
Relying on the talents of a highly-skilled workforce the nursery supplied large quantities of plants to customers all over the country and exported across the world. Catalogues became a crucial part of advertising the products they had for sale, and they promoted their new horticultural techniques through publishing books on specific topics such as roses. Rivers nursery also provided an advisory service, identifying existing fruit trees or recommending trees and plants as part of a garden design.
The nursery declined through the 20th century and was sold at the end of the 1980s, unable to compete with the rise in supermarkets.
Thomas Rivers
In 1827 Thomas Rivers (1798–1877) took over what was then a thriving family business from his father. He would become one of the most highly respected horticulturalists of the Victorian age. His special expertise was in fruit trees and roses, and he presented his new ideas on these topics in horticultural journals and in three extremely successful books.
Thomas Rivers’ first passion was for roses, particularly the new long-flowering roses, which previously had to be imported from France. Later his attention turned to fruit, and he advocated growing fruit trees in pots under glass and root pruning. His ideas revolutionised fruit production with the selection of new cultivars and growing techniques, including a new type of glasshouse dedicated to the efficient production of stone fruit, which he named the ‘orchard house’. During his tenure, 64 varieties of fruit originated in the nursery of which the ‘early Rivers’ plum is probably most notable today.
Darwin and Rivers
Thomas Rivers expertise in horticulture was well known throughout his tenure as owner of Rivers’ nursery. This is seen in a series of correspondence between Charles Darwin (1809–88) and Rivers at the end of 1862 where Darwin asks for Rivers thoughts on ‘bud-variations’ or ‘sports’. He wrote:
‘if you have observed in your enormous experience any remarkable “bud-variations” & could spare time to inform me, & allow me to quote them on your authority, it would be the greatest favour. I feel sure that these “bud-variations” are most interesting to anyone endeavouring to make out, what little can be made out on the obscure subject of variation.’
They eventually exchanged about 30 letters on several different topics, mostly in 1863 when Darwin was working on his book Variation of plants and animals under domestication which he wrote at his home at Down House in Kent. It was published in 1868. The letters also contain a rare instance of the key expressions ‘natural selection’ and ‘struggle for existence’ being used in Darwin’s correspondence.
Image: Charles Darwin on the verandah at Down House in the 1880s
Audley End’s Orchard House
For over 70 years between 1809 and 1884 there are regularly receipts and payments for plants from Rivers nursery to Audley End, mainly for fruit trees, but also for roses, vines, trees and evergreen plants.
In 1855 an orchard house was built at Audley End. The estate’s owner, Lord Braybrooke (1783–1858), had wanted it ‘not only to grow fruit in but as a promenade house in the spring and autumn months, his health being delicate’.
Thomas Rivers designed the orchard house and full details of its construction were later discovered in one of his books.
In August 1856 a large collection of fruit trees was purchased from Rivers nursery to stock the orchard house. By 1859, apricots, peaches, nectarines and plums had been planted.
By the early 21st century only the brick base of the Audley End orchard house survived. A replica house was built in 2001, with some fruit trees grown here once again on the Rivers system.
Legacy
Many of the horticultural techniques and fruit cultivars introduced by Rivers nursery are still available and thriving today. One of their most famous legacies is probably the Conference pear which was developed by Thomas Francis Rivers (1830–99) and now accounts for more than 90% of the UK’s commercial pear production.
A small area of the Rivers nursery site survives and is looked after by the Rivers Heritage Site and Orchard volunteer group as an orchard which can be reached by public footpaths. You can also see the legacy of the Rivers nursery at Audley End where the orchard house has been reconstructed and where we still grow cultivars introduced or sold by Rivers in the kitchen garden.
Header image: Illustration of ‘Rivers’ Early Prolific’ plum which was growing in the orchard house at Audley End in 1859, painted by May Rivers for The Fruit Growers’ Guide (1894)
Further Reading
- H Rougetel, Rivers, Thomas (1798–1877), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) (access with a UK public library card)
- Elizabeth Waugh, Rivers Nursery of Sawbridgeworth: The Art of Practical Pomology, Ware (2009)
- Rivers Heritage Site and Orchard (accessed 18 March 2025)
- Darwin Correspondence Project (accessed 18 March 2025)
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