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Garden Organic, formerly known as the Henry Doubleday Research Association (HDRA), is a UK organic growing charity dedicated to researching and promoting organic gardening, farming and food. The charity maintains the Heritage Seed Library to preserve vegetable seeds from heritage cultivars and make them available to growers. [1]
The Henry Doubleday Research Association was founded in 1954 to research and promote organic gardening, farming, and food. The charity adopted the working name "Garden Organic" in 2005 and is now the UK’s leading organic growing charity. "Henry Doubleday Research Association" remains the legal name under which it is registered as a charity. [2] Its ground demonstrate organic lawn management. [3]
It was founded by horticulturist and freelance journalist Lawrence D. Hills and named after Henry Doubleday, an Essex-based Quaker smallholder who had a particular interest in the properties of comfrey. The organisation was first based at Bocking near Braintree in Essex, hence the name of Bocking 14, a variety of comfrey bred by Hills for its useful properties. [4] A sister organisation was also formed in Australia, the Henry Doubleday Research Association of Australia Inc.
Jackie and Alan Gear took over management of the charity in 1976, and in 1985 the organisation relocated to its present 22-acre (89,000 m2) headquarters site, Ryton Organic Gardens, at Ryton-on-Dunsmore near Coventry in the West Midlands. The Gears retired in 2004, when Dr. Susan Kay-Williams became the chief executive and the charity changed its working name to Garden Organic. Kay-Williams left in the summer of 2007 and the charity appointed Myles Bremner, former director of fundraising at children's charity NCH. Bremner left in the summer of 2013 and was replaced by James Campbell, former acting chief development officer of the Earthwatch Institute.
In the autumn of 2017 Garden Organic announced that it was considering options for the future of its Ryton site, with full or partial sale among the possibilities. Some members expressed concern over the way the charity was handling the issue. [5] [6] In September 2019, Coventry University, whose Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience is located on the Ryton site, purchased it. [7] Garden Organic will remain at Ryton Gardens as a tenant. [7]
The organisation has over 20,000 members. It has trained over 600 Master Composter volunteers from around the UK to spread the home composting message [8] and runs research and international development programmes that help commercial growers across the UK and overseas adopt organic methods.
In 2010 with funding from the Big Lottery Fund’s Local Food Scheme, Sheepdrove Trust and local authorities in four areas — Warwickshire, North London, South London and Norfolk — the Charity set up a Master Gardener Programme. The Charity's Master Gardeners Programme trains and supports mentors and community growing initiatives around the Country working with Local Authorities, Housing Associations and NHS Health providers to support networks of Master Gardeners and volunteers. [9] The Programme has expanded to other areas in the UK and is currently working with G4S in supporting a Master Gardener Programme for offenders in prisons HMP Rye Hill and Onsley. [10]
It used to actively campaign on issues vital to both people and the environment including health, sustainability, and climate change, and helps children in over 15% of the UK's schools learn about food and organic growing through its free education programme, Garden Organic for Schools [11] and through its work on the Food for Life Partnership. [12]
The charity's headquarters are at the Ryton Organic Gardens site in Warwickshire. Here the organisation not only leads its charitable delivery activities, but also runs over 30 individual gardens in 10 acres (40,000 m2) of landscaped grounds open to the public. [13] The site is also home to The Organic Way, extensive conference and educational facilities, a vegetarian/vegan restaurant, a small shop with organic seeds and the charity’s Heritage Seed Library, which conserves over 800 endangered varieties of rare vegetable seeds under threat from extinction.
As well as Ryton Gardens, the charity has run the walled kitchen gardens at Audley End, Essex in association with English Heritage. Audley End is a Jacobean stately home owned by English Heritage and in 1999 Garden Organic restored its walled kitchen garden using organic methods. The Gardens continue to be managed by English Heritage under the guidance of Garden Organic. [14]
A demonstration garden in Yalding, Kent, showing organic growing techniques in fourteen individual gardens was closed in 2007 after 12 years' development because of financial unviability. The site then came under a sequence of several owners and since 2016 has become a venue for weddings and other events. [15]
The charity relies on funds from its supporters and members to carry out its work and, in return, offers a six-monthly magazine, members-only web pages and information sheets, as well as access to the charity’s dedicated team of advisors who answer more than 5,000 organic gardening queries every year. In addition, members gain unlimited free admission to the two demonstration gardens together with the Royal Horticultural Society gardens at Wisley, Harlow Carr, Rosemoor and Hyde Hall, plus over 20 other gardens across the UK.
Garden Organic’s patron is The Prince of Wales. The organisation's President is Professor Tim Lang and Vice Presidents are Raymond Blanc, Thelma Barlow and Susan Hampshire. The charity reaches more than three million beneficiaries across the world.
HDRA has its information leaflets published and translated in Swahili for East African audience.
Symphytum is a genus of flowering plants in the borage family, Boraginaceae, known by the common name comfrey. There are 59 recognized species. Some species and hybrids, particularly S. officinale, Symphytum grandiflorum, and S. × uplandicum, are used in gardening and herbal medicine. They are not to be confused with Andersonglossum virginianum, known as wild comfrey, another member of the borage family.
No-dig gardening is a non-cultivation method used by some organic gardeners. The origins of no-dig gardening are unclear, and may be based on pre-industrial or nineteenth-century farming techniques. Masanobu Fukuoka started his pioneering research work in this domain in 1938, and began publishing in the 1970s his Fukuokan philosophy of "do-nothing farming" or natural farming, which is now acknowledged by some as the tap root of the permaculture movement. Two pioneers of the method in the twentieth century included F. C. King, Head Gardener at Levens Hall, South Westmorland, in the Lake District of England, who wrote the book "Is Digging Necessary?" in 1946 and a gardener from Middlecliffe in the UK, A. Guest, who in 1948 published the book "Gardening Without Digging". The work of these gardeners was supported by the Good Gardeners Association in the UK. No-dig gardening was also promoted by Australian Esther Deans in the 1970s, and American gardener Ruth Stout advocated a "permanent" garden mulching technique in Gardening Without Work and no-dig methods in the 1950s and 1960s.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to organic gardening and farming:
Organic lawn management or organic turf management or organic land care or organic landscaping is the practice of establishing and caring for an athletic turf field or garden lawn and landscape using organic horticulture, without the use of manufactured inputs such as synthetic pesticides or artificial fertilizers. It is a component of organic land care and organic sustainable landscaping which adapt the principles and methods of sustainable gardening and organic farming to the care of lawns and gardens.
Ryton-on-Dunsmore is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Rugby, Warwickshire, situated 5.5 miles southeast of Coventry and 7.5 miles west of Rugby, England. The 2001 Census recorded a population of 1,672 in the parish, increasing to 1,813 at the 2011 Census. The A45 dual carriageway bissects Ryton, and nearby villages include Bubbenhall, Stretton-on-Dunsmore and Wolston. Garden Organic, the leading organic growing charity in the United Kingdom, has a 10-acre (4-hectare) demonstration garden dedicated to organic gardening in the village. Ryton Pools Country Park is about a mile south-west of the village.
A mulch is a layer of material applied to the surface of soil. Reasons for applying mulch include conservation of soil moisture, improving fertility and health of the soil, reducing weed growth and enhancing the visual appeal of the area.
Yalding is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Maidstone in Kent, England. The village is situated 6 miles (9.7 km) south west of Maidstone at a point where the Rivers Teise and Beult join the River Medway. At the 2001 census, the parish, which includes the villages of Benover and Laddingford, had a population of 2,236. increasing to 2,418 at the 2011 Census.
Organic horticulture is the science and art of growing fruits, vegetables, flowers, or ornamental plants by following the essential principles of organic agriculture in soil building and conservation, pest management, and heirloom variety preservation.
An heirloom plant, heirloom variety, heritage fruit, or heirloom vegetable is an old cultivar of a plant used for food that is grown and maintained by gardeners and farmers, particularly in isolated or ethnic minority communities of the Western world. These were commonly grown during earlier periods in human history, but are not used in modern large-scale agriculture.
Henry Doubleday (1810–1902) was an English scientist and horticulturist of Coggeshall in Essex.
Lawrence Donegan Hills was a British horticulturalist and writer. In 1954, he founded the Henry Doubleday Research Association in Bocking, near Braintree, Essex. By the time he retired in 1986, HDRA was the largest body of organic gardeners in the world and had moved to Ryton-on-Dunsmore, near Coventry.
Ammonium sulfamate is a white crystalline solid, readily soluble in water. It is commonly used as a broad spectrum herbicide, with additional uses as a compost accelerator, flame retardant and in industrial processes.
Major Henry Herbert Kitchener, 3rd Earl Kitchener TD DL, styled Viscount Broome from 1928 to 1937, was a British peer. He was unmarried, and when he died the title Earl Kitchener became extinct.
Yalding Gardens were demonstration gardens open to the public near Yalding, Kent in April 1995.
Garden sharing or urban horticulture sharing is a local food and urban farming arrangement where a landowner allows a gardener access to land, typically a front or back yard, in order to grow food.
Russian comfrey or Quaker comfrey is a common hybrid between Symphytum officinale and S. asperum. It represents the economically most important kind of comfrey.
The Agroforestry Research Trust (ART) is a British charitable incorporated organisation that researches temperate agroforestry and all aspects of plant cropping and uses, with a focus on tree, shrub and perennial crops. It produces several publications and a quarterly journal, and sells plants and seeds from its forest gardens.
Climate-friendly gardening is a form of gardening that can reduce emissions of greenhouse gases from gardens and encourage the absorption of carbon dioxide by soils and plants in order to aid the reduction of global warming. To be a climate-friendly gardener means considering both what happens in a garden and the materials brought into it and the impact they have on land use and climate. It can also include garden features or activities in the garden that help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere.
Gardens Alive!, Inc. is a privately owned multi-title catalog company founded in 1984. It sells garden and lawn supplies, specializing in organic products under its namesake catalog. The company has expanded by aggressively purchasing other catalog companies, including expansion into gift and games after acquiring the assets of defunct catalog company BlueSky Brands in 2008. As of 2010, the company has annual sales of approximately $170 million, 60 percent of which was from garden-related business.
St. Raphael's Edible Garden is a community garden located in St. Raphael's Estate. The former derelict site was acquired by Sufra NW London in 2016 and was granted permission to build a community garden project by the Brent Council in 2017. The garden is a private space for local residents and visitors to learn and engage in community gardening activities.
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