Biggest organic display garden in Europe

Garden Organic Ryton near Coventry, about 130 km north west of London, is unique in the whole of Europe. Garden Organic, the working name of the Henry Doubleday Research Association - HDRA, runs this top-class organic display garden, where both gardening enthusiasts and professional growers can learn a great deal. This year the organisation is celebrating its 50th anniversary. A big organic food store enhances the offer for thousands of visitors coming each year.

Picture: Horticulturalist Helena Sanchez-Giral at Garden Organic Ryton

Every year, 50,000 visitors attend the gardens, use the conference facilities, eat in the restaurant and buy things in the shop. At least one school class arrives every day to learn about plants and insects. Garden Organic Ryton consists of about 30 themed gardens covering ten acres. The restaurant that looks out onto the garden, was given an award by the Soil Association as the best organic restaurant in England in 2007.

“A short while ago we announced a national compost week, and lots of people came to find out what it was all about,” says Lucy Halliday, who is responsible for publicity at Garden Organic. At Europe’s biggest organic display garden, they have set aside a special plot  specifically for a whole range of different composting systems suitable, for example, for domestic gardens or even a backyard.

Garden Organic’s aim is to show amateur gardeners how to set up a great-looking productive and decorative garden and how to look after it using only organic principles and inputs. Eighteen full-time and volunteer gardeners maintain the plots, working under one head gardener. They keep everything looking tip-top. In total, Garden Organic employs around 80 people and they certainly can’t complain about a lack of visitors and general appreciation. As Lucy Halliday points out: “When we had the Chelsea Flower Show in 2007 and a TV station reported on one of our theme gardens, the number of visitors here shot up.” 

The journalist and gardening enthusiast Lawrence Hills became interested in the principles of organic gardening in the 1950s, and while pursuing the subject he came across Henry Doubleday, who introduced Russian comfrey to England in the 19th century. Comfrey can be used in various ways in both gardening and in natural remedies. To experiment with comfrey, Hills rented some land at Bocking in Essex and, in 1958, he founded a charity with the aim of researching both comfrey and – this was the crucial decision – organic cultivation in general. He called the charity the Henry Doubleday Research Association - now known as Garden Organic.

The organisation was originally conceived as a club for gardeners who wanted to experiment. In those early days, Lawrence Hills’ wife, Cherry, investigated different aspects of nutrition, long before it became a widely discussed topic of interest. In the sixties, the organisation grew continuously, and the membership increased to 1700, although it was still not taken seriously by scientists. It was only the burgeoning environmental movement in the 1970s that created the conditions in which the Henry Doubleday Research Association finally enjoyed public recognition. By the end of the 1970s, the organisation had grown to such an extent that a new site had to be found, and HDRA moved to Ryton. In 1985, Garden Organic Ryton was founded on 9 ha (22 acres), and it opened on 5th July 1986.  Garden Organic now runs two gardens in different parts of the country as well as conference facilities, the restaurant and the seed project. HDRA- Garden Organic - with its origins reaching back 50 years, is still a charity supported by more than 32,000 members.

Garden Organic used to run another display garden at Yalding in Kent to the south east of London, but after twelve years this project had to be abandoned for financial reasons. However, a new operator has been found (Maro Foods) and the garden will re-open on 24 May this year, still using organic gardening methods. Garden Organic's historic Walled Kitchen Garden at Audley End (Saffron Walden in Essex) continues to be run by the charity, showcasing organic methods in a traditional Victorian garden.

The outstanding display gardens at Garden Organic Ryton consists of 30 different, themed gardens that illustrate various aspects of garden creation and plant selection and thus provide practical guidance – everything from self-sufficiency with vegetables from the garden or allotment, growing herbs, planting fruit trees and getting composting right to learning how to deal with beneficial and harmful insects. The first themed garden you come to is “Vegetable Inspiration”.

Detailed descriptions are provided of what you can see before you in each garden (picture). The Rose Garden, the Paradise Garden, the Bee Garden, the Cook’s Garden and the Fruit Garden are special highlights. Garden Organic is proud to own the world’s biggest flower pot. In the summer of 2007, the Elysia Bio-Dynamic Garden was opened.

As early as 1975, the charity created the Heritage Seed Library (picture shows the shop with plants and food). Instead of selling the seeds of valuable species, they are given away. Since the licences for most of the species have run out, national and EU law does not allow these seeds to be sold. The seeds can no longer be used commercially, but they can be given to the 11,000 members subscribing to the Heritage Seed Library. This means that, in practice, around 45,000 packets of vegetable seeds are distributed to members. Half of the packets are provided by the people who grew the vegetables and preserved the seeds themselves.

A few years ago, Prince Charles became the patron of Garden Organic. Through his financial support for the seed project a visitors centre, called The Vegetable Kingdom (picture), was built in 2003. The aim of the project is to ensure that 800 types of vegetable that are threatened with extinction are prevented from dying out, both by keeping them stored at low temperature and by the continuous process of propagation.
The vegetables include tall varieties of pea and many varieties of tomatoes and runner beans. Great Britain has a centuries-old legacy of vegetable varieties which this project is preserving and making available for the future. The Heritage Seed Library is now highly regarded as one of the most effective seed preservation organisations in Europe.

The charity also runs a school programme called Garden Organic for schools. The project, that more than 10 % of all British schools have joined already, invites schoolchildren to a course in the garden at Ryton and encourages them to put what they have learned into practice in their school garden or their own garden at home. A wealth of ideas, tips and suggestions can be accessed on the website Garden Organic for Schools. From the website you can download back-up materials like posters, leaflets and brochures. The topics covered are composting, mulching, producing seeds and creating a pond and habitats for insects, birds and other creatures. The most important idea is the square-foot garden, because it encourages children to have a go themselves – making a mini-garden just 1.20 m by 1.20 m where they can plant vegetables and flowers (picture).

Garden Organic organises a whole range of events during the course of the year, and local people come from Warwickshire and from farther afield to get information on specific topics. The programme for 2008 includes, for example, a pumpkin day, a herb day, planning an organic vegetable garden and a strawberry ‘fair’.

Other organisations can also hold seminars and conferences in an attractive organic ambience in Garden Organic’s conference centre. The facilities consist of four well equipped rooms of different sizes for up to 80 participants. It goes without saying that these events can be accompanied by excellent organic meals.

The organic restaurant (picture) can seat about 100 people, and it caters for around 100 guests every day, which means that it serves something like 37,000 meals a year. In 2007, this restaurant was honoured as the best organic restaurant in Great Britain. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, you have a splendid view of the garden full of flowering shrubs. Next to the restaurant you can buy potted plants grown at Ryton. Depending on the season, 100-200 varieties are on sale, from tomato plants to espalier pear trees.

Naturally, the garden shop – like at many other display gardens in Britain – has a huge stock of gardening books (picture), seeds, gardening equipment and organic food. The garden shop leads directly into the well stocked wholefood shop, with about 150 m² of sales area. It sells an attractive range of organics, including dairy products, fruit and vegetables.

The organisation publishes a booklet called Overseas News to promote the idea of organic cultivation in developing countries. You can read about Garden Organic’s successes in Afghanistan, plant breeding in Cuba, and setting up new contacts abroad. In its capacity as a research organisation, Garden Organic has a specialist department and continues to produce research publications.

Conclusion: Garden Organic is an exemplary concept that has developed over time to become an all-embracing organisation whose influence and inspiration radiates far beyond the UK. It brings together the long tradition in Britain of ornamental gardening and grow-your-own fruit and vegetable gardening – a combination that has existed in Germany too since the allotment movement was founded over a hundred years ago. It is Garden Organic’s mission to popularise and promote organic gardening, farming and food and to remain wedded to the fundamental principles of the organic way.

Garden Organic is an extremely successful organisation that enjoys wide support. Nothing would make more sense than to set up this kind of institution in other countries too.

Tip: www.gardenorganic.org.uk