In my mid-thirties I decided that light industry no longer held any attraction for me; I enrolled at Oaklands to do a National Certificate of Horticulture. I was advised to get some practical experience at a nursery before the course commenced, and was very grateful when offered holiday work at Sawbridgeworth. This short period imbued me with such a fascination for the history of the this famous grower that I vowed to seek permanent employment there when the course ended, and was fortunate enough to be offered this. So began the happiest and most fulfilling spell in my working life.

 

For the first year or so, I was involved in the full range of work on the Nursery - digging up and packing plants and trees during the dormant season, budding roses in the Summer, training the various ‘shaped’ fruit trees like fans or espalier, and all the other routine jobs like weed control. One of the most intriguing was the annual trip outside the Nursery to the Rivers osier plantation which we coppiced for the sticks and thicker poles used for packing plants for despatch in the Winter. I recall that we had to get permission from the owner of a pig-farm to cross his land, and also inform the station master at Sawbridgeworth that we would be crossing the line with a tractor and trailer!

 

However, since my course at Oaklands had been mainly concerned with decorative plants rather than fruit, I was later made responsible for shrub production, and had a hand in laying out and planting up a demonstration shrub garden to give customers of the Garden Centre some idea of the size and habit of the small plants they might purchase. I was also trained in propagation of the citrus fruit we produced. This was done by growing understocks from grapefruit seed sent from a contact in S. Africa and grafting on varieties from the stock plants in the Orangery.

 

By this time very few of our fruit trees were propagated from scratch, as it were, like the citrus. The orchard, which the Friends of Rivers Orchard have recently worked so hard to restore, was by the 1970s very overgrown and no longed used for budwood. The bulk of the stock came from a wholesale nursery in Worcestershire as either maidens (1 year old plants), or partially trained trees which we grew on. Raspberries came from a certified grower in Scotland, strawberries from a Hampshire nursery, but we did produce all others soft fruits as well as vines and figs from cuttings. We also propagated hedging plants.

 

It was only after the departure of Mr. Thomas Rivers’ son-in-law, Francis Peeters, that I was catapulted into management. Then I became aware of the difficulties of maintaining a business of this kind. Gone were most of the large properties with their walled gardens and large orchards. Our customers now were used to garden centres where everything was instantly available, and waiting for their apple tress to be dug up in the Winter just did not appeal. Because of the long-established reputation, we did still have a reasonable mail order business, but rising fuel and wage costs were causing the packing and carriage charges to be unacceptably high. Given the time, I did hope to at least begin to have available a wider range of containerised fruit, but when the rivers family members decided to put the Nursery up for sale the plans came to naught. It became obvious that one of the most famous names in national, indeed international, horticulture was going to fade into obscurity.

 

Tony Slingsby 2007