OFFSHOOT-Memory Keepers at RHS Garden Bridgewater

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Join us at RHS Garden Bridgewater to meet photographer Yan, hear about her residency at the garden to date and find out how you can become a 'Memory Keeper' for our magnicicent 300-year-old tree.

On the historical grounds of RHS Garden Bridgewater stands a magnificent sweet chestnut tree, estimated to be about 300 years old. If trees are memory keepers, what memories from the past three centuries of our vibrant and turbulent history might this tree hold? Yan Wang Preston, Artist in Residence at RHS Garden Bridgewater, wishes to create an artwork to honour the sweet chestnut tree’s life, and to retrace and explore its preserved memories – with your help.

On Saturday, 21 June 2025 – the Summer Solstice – Yan will host the first memory-collecting event at RHS Garden Bridgewater, to launch the project and to pilot the memory gathering process.

The two-hour event will begin with a conversation between Yan and Josh Corbett, Bridgewater’s arboriculture team manager and self-proclaimed tree enthusiast. They will discuss their respective roles as artist and arborist, and focus on how to look after woodlands for the future. Yan will then introduce the star of the event, the sweet chestnut tree, before inviting volunteers to take part in a raffle, in which each participant will be randomly assigned a year between 1720 and 2020. Your task is to write a short (5-10 sentences) historical story inspired by that year. It doesn’t have to be connected to the tree and can be about any historical event that happened during that particular year.

Should you wish to take part, you will go home with an artfully designed folder containing a short brief and a sheet of blank paper, contemporary and 19th century photographs of the tree, and a special return envelope addressed to Salford Museum and Art Gallery. Please join us as one of the 300 Memory Keepers. Your memory will be part of a collaborative artwork to be exhibited at Salford Museum and Art Gallery in 2026/27. Together, we can preserve memories and celebrate the enduring presence of our sweet chestnut tree.
Memory Keepers is both a talk and a participatory event. Submitting a story is entirely optional.