Over the past couple of years we have been leafing through the Brambly Hedge archives and working with the City of London Corporation to find out more about Jill Barklem’s love of Epping Forest. Epping Forest is a vital green corridor that stretches from the rural Essex countryside right into urban London. It’s a place Jill spent a lot of time sketching and taking photos, many of which were used as inspiration for the Brambly Hedge books. A couple of years ago we matched up notes, sketches, and photos from the archive to confirm that we had rediscovered a very special tree, the original Hornbeam tree that Jill used to create the home of the Toadflax family in her illustrations. In April 2026 we went back to Epping Forest for another successful discovery… Crabapple Cottage!
This Crabapple tree is home to Mr and Mrs Apple and is one of Jill’s most recognisable illustrations; the cross-section of Crabapple Cottage in full blossom from Spring Story. We once again used photos, notes, and sketches from the archive to track the tree down, which is only a short distance from Jill’s home at the time she was creating Spring Story. The tree is over 300 years old and still thriving as it was in full blossom in early April this year.
For those who want to find out more about Crabapple Cottage and Jill’s research for Brambly Hedge, there is currently a display in the Epping Forest Visitor Centre at Chingford that willbe in place until September 2026.
From northeast of London we head across the city, where preparations are in full swing for the 2026 RHS Chelsea Flower Show, one of the most celebrated horticultural events of the year.
Jill Barklem was fascinated by botany and the natural world, she became an expert on wild flowers and spent many hours photographing every petal and illustrating every minute detail in her sketchbooks, much of this research came to fruition on the pages of her Brambly Hedge books.
She would visit the RHS Chelsea Flower show whenever she could, it was one the highlights of her year, and if she couldn’t make it in person she would be glued to the BBC watching every episode. It’s one of the many reasons that May was her favourite month of the year.
Unsurprisingly, she would always prefer the show gardens that looked as though they had been plucked straight from the natural landscape in which they belong. For her that would always be the natural wonder of the hedgerow.
On this theme, we arrive at the 2026 Show where we have teamed up with the incredibly talented Mille Richardson and Stokesay Flowers to bring Jill’s hedgerow to the Chelsea Flower Show. ‘A visit to Brambly Hedge’ will adorn the Bull Ring gate entrance to the show, which is located on the river Thames embankment in Chelsea.
The installation highlights the importance of our hedgerows to biodiversity within our landscape in the UK and beyond. Since the 1940s the UK has lost nearly 50% of its hedgerows, a vital habitat for many species.
The installation also pays homage to Jill as both a storyteller and an artist. It will flow across the gate in a journey from spring through to summer with an abundance of fresh, seasonal, British-grown flowers from Stokesay’s traditional walled garden in south Shropshire. The wild hedgerow foliage that intertwines the installation will be from the Badminton estate in Gloucestershire.
Violets, cowslips and forget-me-nots emerge from the hedgerow, evoking the warm days when the mice step out to welcome spring. As summer unfolds, honeysuckle and wild roses, including rambler Rosa ‘François Juranville’ and English garden rose ‘Emily Brontë’, fill the air with sweetness, and thoughts turn to a very special occasion…
Head through the Bull Ring gate into the Great Pavillion where you will find a further installation celebrating Poppy and Dusty’s wedding!
There will also be a Brambly Hedge window installation on display at Waterstones bookshop on the King’s Road. They will have plenty of stock of our latest books including A Visit to Brambly Hedge and our new board books House for a Mouse and Nice For Mice, as well as lots of items from our stationery and homeware range.
Following the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, we can now announce that we will also be attending the first ever RHS Badminton Flower Show, from the 8th to the 12th July 2026. As mentioned, some of the foliage used in the Bull Ring Gate installation comes from the Badminton estate, so it seems fitting that we head back to the Gloucestershire to continue our horticultural celebration into the summer. We wanted to make sure that our installations are as sustainable as possible, therefore many of the plants and trees used at the Chelsea Flower Show will be reused to create new installations for the RHS Badminton Show, and will then go on to find permanent homes after the summer 2026 RHS shows.
We will be working with Millie Richardson Flowers to decorate the RHS letters at the Badminton Show, where there will also be a children’s activity area and a Brambly Hedge shop.
We hope you enjoy the installations over the coming weeks! For those of you who are unable to make it to RHS Chelsea or Badminton Flower Show…. don’t worry, there will be plenty of photos and film on our socials, there is also a dedicated page on of website here.
It’s been an incredibly chilly May so far (currently sideways hail outside the window), so hopefully some warm summer sunshine is on the way!?
Pete Barklem
Mid–May 2026
England