Summer is very much here, and we are celebrating our 45th year! After a dry and warm spring, the parched land could do with some rain, fortunately we’ve had a few showers to quench the earth this week and the blackberries are ripening fast in the warm glow of the July sun. It looks like it will be a very fruitful harvest this year!
The weighty bunches of blackberries found along your local hedgerow will soon also be found on the shelves of your local bookshop… on the cover of A Visit To Brambly Hedge. To celebrate the Brambly Hedge books first being published forty-five years ago in 1980, and after many requests from you all, a new updated edition of A Visit To Brambly Hedge will publish in the UK on the 28th August and in the USA on 2nd September.
The illustration featured on the front is particularly special, as it was never actually featured in the original eight Brambly Hedge books. Now, for the first time, it’s on the front cover of a Brambly Hedge book! The scene on this new edition of ‘A Visit’ features our community of mice helping each other to gather in the hedgerow bounty of blackberries, elderberries, and damsons, ready for preserving, pickling, and pouring into bottles to ferment over the coming months. It’s a scene repeated, albeit on a larger scale, across the nation as the harvest seasons rolls in, and all hands are on deck to make the most of the dry, sunny days, and long evenings.
Inside ‘A Visit to Brambly Hedge’ you’ll find maps, a family tree, and descriptions of all the Brambly Hedge mice, homes, and workplaces. You can take a journey through all the seasonal celebrations from icy Midwinter, through Spring to Midsummer, from the harvest to the falling leaves and warm fires of Autumn. We head up to visit the Voles in the High Hills and down to the shore to visit the mice who live by the sea.
Along the way we’ve featured many pencil sketches from the Jill’s archive, showing how some of her illustrations were researched, crafted, and developed over months of work in her studio. The book also looks at how Brambly Hedge began, and places across Britain that inspired her, from the ancient trees of Epping Forest, to the high rocky fells of the Lake District, and on to the wide sandy beaches of north Norfolk.
It’s been wonderful looking through the archives to find unpublished and even unseen sketches for this book, but in all honesty, this only scratches the surface. There are vast piles of Jill’s work that remain unseen by the public. From her art school projects in the late 1960s and early 70s, through her freelance illustrator days, and on to her Brambly Hedge era in the 1980s and 90s. Hopefully in future we can get these archives on display in London for you all to enjoy!
With the Summer holidays upon us, the Brambly Hedge Nature Colouring Book is your ideal companion! Featuring seasonal illustrations from Summer Story, Sea Story, and Poppy’s Babies, it’s the perfect time to get outside and make sure your colour pallet for each flower is correct! For those of you (and there are many!) who prefer the colder days and cosy evenings… the Festive Colouring Book starts with harvest scenes, especially blackberry picking, so you can get your pencils out and colour your way towards autumn!
If you are looking to visit something Brambly Hedge related over the summer, we have our new Summer Story Trail at Abbotsbury Swannery in Dorset. The Trail includes a new Summer Story Brambly Hedge booklet and now has a new maze to navigate! The Trail is open daily all the way through to mid-November. Head over to the Abbotsbury Swannery page for more details.
In Epping Forest, the Brambly Hedge wooden sculptures are in place ready for the official Trail opening this autumn, but you are free to go and visit the mice basking in the summer sun if you wish! There’s also plenty of Brambly Hedge items in the Epping Forest visitor centre shop.
If you’re looking for Brambly Hedge puzzles, cards, gift wrap, and stationery a little closer to home in the UK, then your local bookshop should be able to help. We now also have two new products that are only available in Waterstones bookshops, the new Picnic Preparations 1000 piece jigsaw and a new organic cotton canvas tote bag featuring the crabapple roasting kitchen scene from Winter Story. Both items are now available to order exclusively from Waterstones.
As you know, we have many other puzzles available, including the Harvest scene featured on the front of A Visit to Brambly Hedge, head over to our shop to explore more.
The new edition of Country Life magazine has just landed on my desk and features a lovely feature titled ‘Tails from the hedgerow’, celebrating forty-five years of Brambly Hedge… how time flies when you’re busy harvesting!
Have a wonderful summer!
Pete Barklem
Late July 2025
England