A Future Garden With Roots In The Past

Garden Organic, the national horticultural charity, has opened the doors on a new organic demonstration and learning garden. We take a tour with head gardener Emma O’Neill

- Emma O'Neill

Garden Organic has been at the forefront of the organic horticulture movement for more than 60 years. The charity has encouraged people to grow fruit, veg, and flowers organically and sustainably and has developed the garden at its home in Ryton, Coventry.

This new garden addresses ways of dealing with the challenges of climate extremes such as flooding and drought demonstrate the practices and principles of successful organic gardening and will help a new generation of people grow in a more environmentally friendly, sustainable and healthy way.

The charity’s head gardener Emma O’Neill provided a sneak preview of the layout of the new garden.

Emma gave us the details: “The garden contains three distinct areas – a kitchen garden, floral garden and a main working area.

“The kitchen garden (potager), has fruit and vegetables on show within a large four-bed rotation system.

“The display predominantly features unusual or endangered varieties of vegetables saved by the charity’s Heritage Seed Library. Vegetables include remarkable gems such as Freers Mummy Pea, rumored to have come from the tomb of Tutankhamun, and the ‘Black Valentine’ dwarf French bean, first recorded in 1897 and grown at Highgrove by HRHThe Prince of Wales’s gardening team, who have acted as volunteer seed guardians for Garden Organic for a number of years. HRH The Prince of Wales is the patron of the charity.

“This area demonstrates the important techniques of organic gardening including no-dig techniques, water-saving, green manure use, composting, organic lawn care and methods of encouraging beneficial wildlife.”