Back to nature

Val Garden organically and let nature help you

- Val Bourne

I’VE been an organic gardener all my life and I’ve taken a lot of flak over the years. People used to tell me that it was impossible to garden organically and that was a commonly held view in the past. I sat in a meeting of National Head Gardeners way back in the mid-1990s, and many of them expressed such an opinion. That wouldn’t happen today. Then there are those who think you’re cranky and quirky, because organic gardening is misunderstood. The worst thing, though, is being doubted. One garden visitor asked me where I hid my slug pellets!

Well, I am proud to be an organic gardener and I am pleased to say that our newly crowned King Charles III is also an organic gardener. Forty thousand people a year visit his garden at Highgrove House in Gloucestershire. It’s living proof that organic gardening really works. Highgrove’s Plant Heritage Collection of large and giant-leaved hostas, for instance, isn’t ravaged by slugs and snails because the garden is alive with creatures that devour them for His Majesty. Ground beetles, frogs, hedgehogs, birds, centipedes and slow-worms also eat them, and there are cannibalistic slugs and snails, too.