The Friends of the Storey Gardens (FOSG) have received an award from the Lancaster University Community Benefits Fund towards the recreation of The Tasting Garden. 

The amount received will enable us to purchase two further replacement sandstone plinths for fruit sculptures.  We do not currently have the remaining funds for the sculptures themselves but the cost of producing a sculpture is significantly less than the cost of a plinth.

Once the two new plinths have been purchased and delivered, we will install all four plinths in The Tasting Garden.  After this Alan Ward will engrave the names of all four fruits on the plinths.  Then the two fruit sculptures already created by Alan will be fixed to their plinths.  This will leave four new plinths in the garden, two with sculptures and two without.

The location of the two new plinths has yet to be finalised but one will probably be in the Apple path and the other in the Cherry path.  Thus we will have one new plinth in each of the four paths.

We hope to have all this work completed by the end of spring 2023.

Below is a photo of the Lord Suffield apple tree.  It is a possible location for the plinth in the Apple path.

This week Lancaster City Council staff have removed the existing concrete plinth by the Swan’s Egg pear tree. The old plinth for the Czar plum was removed in May 2022. Click here to read that post.

Also, on 27 September 2022 we reported that that Alan Ward has completed both the Swan’s Egg pear and Czar plum sculptures. Click here to read that post.

The next step is to install the new Sandstone plinths alongside these trees in The Tasting Garden. After this, Alan will engrave the names of the fruits on the plinths and the sculptures will then be fitted onto the plinths. We will keep you informed of progress.

There are no photographs of the Swan’s Egg pear plinth being removed. We do, however, have photos of the plinth next to the pear tree prior to removal and the tree again but with the plinth no longer present. There are also photos of the plinth in two pieces at the bottom of the Garden awaiting removal. See the slideshow below.

Alan Ward has completed the sculpture of the Czar plum. He has also made the wooden stalks for both the Swan’s Egg pear and the Czar plum.

Chris Wright has taken photographs of Alan polishing the Czar plum sculpture and also a photograph of both fruit sculptures with their wooden stalks in place.

Alan Ward has been making progress on the second fruit sculpture, Czar plum, in his studio in Lancaster Castle.

Chris Wright has visited him on a number of occasions to photograph how the work is taking shape.

See the short slideshow below.

Lancaster based sculptor, Alan Ward has started work on the second of the replacement stone fruit sculptures – the Czar plum. The sculpture is being carved from Portland stone. Alan is working from a polystyrene model created by artist Robert Williams.

Chris Wright has been back to Alan’s studio in Lancaster Castle to photograph the early stages. See the slideshow below.

Alan Ward has completed the sculpture of the Swan’s Egg pear. At the bottom of this post are photographs Chris Wright has taken showing Alan making the finishing touches. There is a circular depression at the top of the fruit sculpture. This is where the wooden stalk will be fitted.

There is still work to be done before the sculpture can go on display in The Tasting Garden.

The existing plinth next to the Swan’s Egg tree in the garden has to be removed and the new plinth made of sandstone installed. Then Alan will inscribe the name the fruit on the plinth. Finally the fruit sculpture will be fixed to the plinth.

All these activities will be take a few weeks yet. Progress will be reported as new posts on this blog.

Chris Wright has been visiting Alan Ward in his studio yet again.

Below are some more photos from Chris taken between 29 July and 2 August 2022.

You can see how the Portland stone sculpture is taking shape and is now looking like a pear.

Chris Wright has made three more visits to Alan Ward’s studio in Lancaster Castle to record progress.

Here are some of the photographs Chris took. You can see that the sculpture is clearly taking shape.

Chris Wright has been back to Alan Ward’s studio in Lancaster Castle to take some more photographs. 

Alan is sculpting the first replacement stone fruit – Swan’s Egg pear.  The sculpture is being carved from Portland stone.

Lancaster based sculptor, Alan Ward has started work on the first of the replacement stone fruit sculptures – the Swan’s Egg pear. The sculpture is being carved from Portland stone. Alan is working from a polystyrene model created by artist Robert Williams.

Chris Wright has taken some photographs of Alan at work. See below.

The Friends of the Storey Gardens have commissioned the first two new fruit sculptures.

The first sculpture will be the Czar plum funded by the Friends of Storey Gardens themselves.  The second will be the Swan’s Egg pear funded by Lancaster City Council. 

The fruits will be carved in Portland stone by local sculptor Alan Ward.  The sculptures will be installed on new plinths.

The existing plinth for the Czar plum sculpture has already been removed.  See a separate blog post for a few photographs of this happening.

Click on the image below for a plan of The Tasting Garden to see where the Czar plum and Swan’s Egg pear trees are located in the garden.

The first replacement fruit sculpture to be installed in The Tasting Garden will be the fruit of the Czar plum tree. In preparation for this the old plinth had to be removed. This was done on Wednesday 18th May 2022 by Lucas Introna and Dave Brookes.

Below are some photos taken at various stages of the process.

Although the final touches have still to be completed, the bulk of the work was undertaken by a member of the Friends in 2021.

The work included replacing the rotten wooden frames to the glazing and repainting all the external woodwork.

Below are a couple of images showing the rotten frames followed by an image after the restoration.