Early Autumn 2026
At the end of my last blog in May, I was lamenting the unseasonably chilly weather and hoping there would be some warm summer sunshine on the way! Cue over forty days without any rain, the hedgerow is scorched and the land parched, the heat this summer in the UK has been relentless. As I write, a few showers of rain have at last arrived and the heat has started to disperse… autumn is on the way after all, much to the relief of many, no doubt!
It seems like a distant memory standing on a very chilly Chelsea Embankment at 2am back in May adding the final touches to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show installations. On that May Monday morning the Bull Ring Gate entrance was transformed from iron and stone into and a dense hedgerow, full of rambling roses, hawthorn, and honeysuckle. As it would turn out, that was the start of our long hot summer of 2026, by the final days of the Chelsea Flower Show, we were bathed in warm sunshine. The installation in the Grand Pavillion was buzzing with bees and the heady aroma of jasmine and wild roses filled the air. Millie Richardson, the florist with whom we collaborated, managed to capture the essence of Poppy and Dusty’s wedding right in the middle of London. It was wonderful to see so many people walking under the floral arch and reconnecting with Brambly Hedge through the flowers, foliage, and displays of Jill’s artwork on the wall.
No sooner had the doors closed on RHS Chelsea, we found ourselves standing in front of Badminton House preparing for our next flower show, RHS Badminton! With the sun beating down on the Gloucestershire countryside, the RHS letters installed by the lake were transformed into a homage to Jill’s artwork. The installation featured an abundance of seasonal English flowers and hedgerow plants, many of which were re-used from the RHS Chelsea installation. The family area featured a further hedgerow installation from Millie, Brambly Hedge illustration boards, face painting, leaf decorating, dressing-up, and readings from Summer Story, all under the very welcome shade of the trees! We also had a pop-up Brambly Hedge shop on site featuring many of our new items, including wall stickers, drinks bottles, and our (very popular) new board books. It was so lovely to meet so many of you at the shop and to hear wonderful stories about growing up with Brambly Hedge.
Millie’s installations at both RHS events are testament to her skill and eye for detail, the fact that she continued with a full calendar of other events (including a Royal Wedding!), is even more incredible! A huge thank you to Millie and her team for creating the Brambly Hedge RHS installations this summer, head over to Millie’s page to see more of her wonderful work. A big thank you to The RHS for hosting us at both events and also to Stokesay Flowers for providing their beautiful blooms from their walled garden.
From the south of the Cotswold Hills, we now head up to the north Cotswolds, specifically to the National Trust’s Hidcote Manor. The seventeenth century manor is perched on a high vantage point with views across fields and hedgerows to the Vale of Evesham and the Malvern Hills. The beautiful gardens that surround the manor were created in the arts & crafts style, Jill’s absolute favourite type of garden!
This autumn we have partnered with the wonderful team at Hidcote to produce a Trail that encompasses both the manor and the gardens. The Trail follows Primrose on a journey which starts inside the manor house, where you feel the size of mouse, with oversized blackberries and apples hanging from walls, just like in the homes of the Brambly Hedge mice. We then follow Primrose’s journey through the gardens discovering tiny doors in the trees, hidden rooms, extracts from Autumn Story, and little mice to find beneath the plants and foliage. The team at Hidcote have done an amazing job of crafting and upcycling items for the Trail, we can’t wait for you to visit! The new Trail opens on the 26th September and will run through to September 2027, for more details head to the Hidcote Trail page here.
Meanwhile, over in Epping Forest the wooden sculpture Trail has been proving very popular during the summer holidays. Back in the spring we opened a temporary exhibition at Epping Forest Visitor Centre in Chingford, featuring items from Jill’s Studio and unseen draft sketches and artwork for the Brambly Hedge books. If you haven’t had a chance to visit, best head over there soon, as the last day of this exhibition will be 27th September 2026.
It’s been another busy summer down in Dorset too, the High Hills and Sea Story themed adventures at Abbotsbury Swannery will continue through autumn until the 31st October 2026. The Trail includes an activity booklet with stamp points to collect around the site. There’s a climbing wall to test your mountaineering skills and the welcome return of the Periwinkle boat, this year down by the water’s edge.
Further afield we have had plenty of new translations of the Brambly Hedge books arriving, these include new Dutch editions of Spring, Autumn, and Winter Story from Boycott Books, a Czech edition of the Compete Brambly Hedge from Pikola Nakladatelstvi, and new individual hardback editions in Italy from Edizioni EL.
Over the past couple of years we have had many requests for Brambly Hedge cross-stitch kits to be produced… now they are here! The team at Bothy Threads, based in in Cumbria, have been producing cross-stitch kits since 1993 and have quite a following in the stitching community. We have just launched two new cross stitch kits with Bothy Threads, ‘Tea With The Harvest Mice’ and ‘I Wonder if Anyone Lives Down There’. Based on Primrose’s adventures from Autumn Story, these two kits should keep you busy as the nights draw in and the weather turns. Both cross-stitch kits are available now from our store and the Bothy Threads shop, though I must warn you, these are nearly sold out already! There will be a restock of these first two kits soon, and there are more Brambly Hedge cross-stitch designs coming soon!
As we move into autumn, thoughts are already turning to next year. The new 2027 Brambly Hedge Calendar is now in stock and many have already been shipped out. After many, many requests, we can also exclusively announce that there is now a 2027 Brambly Hedge Family Planner available for the first time! The Planner features five columns so that everyone in the family can keep organised. Keeping on that theme… our new 2027 Diaries are also now in stock, including the A5 Diary, A6 Pocket Diary, and Year Planner Diary.
2026 marks the 40th anniversary of The High Hills, in our next blog we’ll be looking into the story of how Jill researched and created her mountain adventure.
For now, enjoy the last of the warm days and the fruit harvest!
Pete Barklem
Early September 2026
England