Vilhelms Purvītis’ grandfather Jēkabs began landscaping the garden at the Jauži home in the 1870s. He invites little Vilhelms to help with the work and shows him a place where the young gardener can experiment with planting and grafting fruit trees himself. Locals remember: “With great dedication, the boy helped his grandfather plant the garden, set up a school of fruit trees, as well as learnt to graft apple and pear trees. Seeing the boy’s interest in gardening, his relatives gave him a small corner of the garden to work as his own, being a gardener, and Vilhelms started growing different varieties of trees there.” “The garden is planted with traditional Latvian summer apple varieties – cukurīši and baltie dzidrie, as well as winter and autumn varieties, whose seedlings were probably obtained by Latvian farmers from the Jaunpils Manor’s landlord”, explain the teachers of Bulduri Horticultural School.

The garden has survived revolutions, wars and the Soviet occupation with dignity, and continues to delight every spring with flowering trees, and every summer and autumn with delicious apples. Under the guidance of specialists from Bulduri Horticulture School, the old apple orchard will be professionally landscaped in spring 2024. In the Spring Culture Clean-up, we will expand the garden by planting new apple trees to continue to delight visitors to the museum’s main open-air exhibition. We especially welcome visitors in the second half of May, when the garden is in full bloom! In summer, when the first apples – “sugar apples” – are particularly sweet and delicious, and in autumn, guests can enjoy apple pie and linden blossom tea, harvested from the historic linden trees at the edge of the garden.