News from Garden Organic

Free Sowing New Seeds workshops - 10-05-2012

Garden Organic’s Sowing New Seeds project will be running free workshops in Leicester, Nottingham, Coventry and Birmingham on growing non-traditional foods.

The workshops, in May and June, offer a fascinating insight into the more unusual crops that can be successfully grown to eat in the UK.

May 2012 Organic Matters Newsletter link Problems - 04-05-2012

We would like to offer our apologies for any problems encountered with our May 2012 Newsletter

The fight against blight - 30-04-2012

Could you help fight blight?
Potato and tomato blight can really ruin a veg growers day. Could you help in the fight to control this devastating disease?

Organic Kitchen Garden at Audley End Announcement - 04-04-2012

As of 1st April 2012, after a proud and successful thirteen years, firstly as restorers and subsequently custodians, Garden Organic, has handed back the daily management of the Organic Kitchen Garden at Audley End to English Heritage.

James Wong: How to grow ‘pomatoes’...or should that be ‘tomtatoes’? - 03-04-2012

Ethnobotanist and Garden Organic Ambassador, James Wong brings you his advice on how to grow 'pomatoes'!!! What ever you decide to call them, these amazing grafted plants fuse tomato shoots onto potato roots, giving you, in theory, ‘hybrid’ plants that offer up twice the crop from the same small plot.

Diagnose your garden with Compost Day clinics! - 02-04-2012

Garden Organic is urging the region’s gardeners to bring along their compost queries and gardening questions when it hosts an official event as part of the UK’s first ever National Gardening Week 16 to 22 April 2012.

Ryton Gardens, home of Garden Organic, will host a special Compost Day on Thursday 19 April as part of the festivities for RHS National Gardening Week, a nationwide initiative to get everybody gardening.

New Keder house at Ryton Gardens - 27-03-2012
A brand new mini Keder and coldframe, generously donated by Keder Greenhouses, have now taken pride of place in the Allotment Garden in the grounds of Ryton Gardens.
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Food for Life Partnership success recognised by continued Big Lottery funding - 21-03-2012

The Food for Life Partnership has been awarded further Lottery funding of £1million as part of an initiative by the Big Lottery Fund to support its grantholders in the tough economic environment.

To join the Food for Life Partnership or find out more, check out www.foodforlife.org.uk

Garden Organic survey shows Allium leaf miner spreading fast - 08-03-2012

Threat to leek & onions spreads: A Garden Organic survey shows that allium leaf miner, a devastating allotment and garden pest, reached many parts of the Midlands, and further afield, for the first time last year.

In a report published today a government-backed Taskforce has proven, for the first time, the benefits to children who experience food growing in England’s schools.

Winter is only just drawing to a close and yet in parts of the country a drought warning has already been issued. Now is the time to take steps to cut your garden’s need for watering. Here are our ten top tips for avoiding the tap!

Garden Organic is urging people to channel their passion for compost into creativity and enter its poster and ‘paint a bin’ competition for Compost Awareness Week 6 -11 May 2012.

From over 1,500 visitors during the 2012 Potato Weekend at Ryton Gardens, a winner for the event’s fabulous Compost Competition has been announced.

RHS theory and practical courses for everyone from young novices, career changers hoping to give up the day job, working gardeners who want paper qualifications and experienced gardeners who want to keep training, can now be taken at Ryton Gardens.

The UK’s longest running event dedicated solely to spuds will gear up for its 17th consecutive year in 2012, promising a real treat for potato growing enthusiasts!

Potato Day on Saturday 28th January (open to members only) and Sunday 29 January 2012 (open to all), made famous by Garden Organic for almost two decades, is a must attend event!

New research centre to tackle food and water security worldwide - 13-01-2012

A new research and development centre that will play a leading role in alleviating rural poverty and ensuring food and water security worldwide is being launched by Coventry University and Garden Organic.

It is with great sadness that we report the death of Lord Kitchener, our past President, who passed away on 16 December 2011, aged 92.

Over the winter months work has been taking place on transforming part of the old herb garden into the new Compost and Soil Fertility Garden.

Garden Organic on the BBC - 19-12-2011

It's been a bumper month for Garden Organic with two prime TV appearances on BBC One in December.

When I wrote our Christmas letter last year we were beginning that phenomenal cold snap. This year I wonder what on earth the weather is doing; summer in April, April showers in August, and spring again in autumn, but Ryton Gardens has been resilient and splendid as always.

Today the Food for Life Partnership was awarded the prestigious BBC Radio 4 Derek Cooper Award. The award recognises "unsung heroes, whose work has increased our access to, and knowledge and appreciation of, good food".

The Food for Life Partnership comprises four charities: the Soil Association, Health Education Trust, Garden Organic and Focus on Food Campaign. The project is funded by a BIG lottery grant of £16.9million, until December 2011

A top US speaker on agroecology will launch a brand new collaboration between Coventry University and leading charity, Garden Organic, on Monday 21 November 2011: The Centre for Agroecology and Food Security.

The People's Potato Book - 04-11-2011
The Peoples Potatoes is a new, illustrated book by Alan Wilson, author of The Story of The Potato - a popular Garden Organic Potato Day seller!
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Spreading the Word of Exotic Crops - 03-11-2011
The Sowing New Seeds project has had a highly successful season in its quest to preserve the heritage of non-traditional crops grown on allotments in the Midlands. We trained people, we built a garden and we trialled a huge number of unusual crops!
Read more...

Green-fingered students share success with Minister - 01-11-2011

A bright crop of pupils in Greenwich put on a gardening masterclass for Agriculture Minister Jim Paice today [Tuesday November 1].

The budding gardeners of Charlton Manor school showed off their grow your own skills and the minister will now take back the lessons he’s learned to the Food Growing in Schools Taskforce so that other schools can follow their lead.

Garden Organic welcomes Jamie Oliver school food manifesto - 25-10-2011
Garden Organic welcomes Jamie Oliver school food manifesto
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**Help us grow - become a Trustee** - 04-10-2011

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Time is ripe for apple event - 04-10-2011

Sunset, Discovery, King of the Pippins and many more of Britain’s vast variety of apples will be celebrated on Saturday 15 and Sunday 16 October 2011 at the Ryton Gardens Apple Weekend.

The popular annual event, from charity Garden Organic, is dedicated to the apple harvest and promises a fun day out for all of the family.

Open from 11am – 4pm, visitors will be able to sample and buy from a range of apple varieties, whilst children can make apple bird feeders.

Garden Organic, champions of organic gardening for over 50 years, have Christmas all wrapped up in shades of green. See their top three gift recommendations for this festive season.

A member of the Cuban Embassy, Counsellor Rafael Sardina Gonzalez, dropped by at Ryton Gardens this week to take a look at the new Exotic Garden.

A brand new garden built on the principles of an organoponico has been officially opened by TV star, James Wong, at Garden Organic’s Ryton Gardens.

A selection of never seen before, specially created sculptures by a talented artist will take root from Tuesday 16 August – Thursday 15 September at Ryton Gardens in Warwickshire.

For one month only, six specially created sculptures by Coventry artist, Liam Ball, will be on site at Ryton Gardens, the home of Garden Organic for visitors to discover, ponder and admire.

A tree planted by the founder of the organic gardening movement has flowered for the first time in a quarter of a century at the headquarters of Garden Organic.

HRH hosts Highgrove reception - 05-08-2011
In recognition of the great work that Garden Organic delivers and to show his support as our Patron, HRH The Prince of Wales hosted a high proﬁle, mid-summer evening reception at his Highgrove home.
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Master Composters meet Royalty - 04-08-2011
Twelve volunteers helped out on the stand in the Norfolk County Council marquee. The stand was visited by Princess Anne on the Thursday as part of her day at the show.
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The Garden Organic Book of compost - 04-08-2011
The Garden Organic Book of compost has been written by the Garden Organic team of experts

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The Gardening Conference 2011 - The outcomes - 11-07-2011

From 13th to 14th of May 2011 Garden Organic held two days of conferences at its Ryton Gardens HQ

To put a stop to the equivalent of over 24 million wheelbarrows of endangered peat used unnecessarily each year by amateur gardeners, Garden Organic launches the I Don't Dig Peat campaign.

A ten-acre patch of windy paddock, now transformed into Garden Organic’s beautiful organic gardens will celebrate a special birthday this July with theatre and cake!

Ryton Gardens, home to Garden Organic, has grown from bare beginnings into mature and tranquil gardens, and to celebrate its 25th birthday, will be holding a special afternoon open-air theatre performance on Sunday 10 July 2011.

Children in more than half our secondary schools are missing out because they don’t grow their own fruit and veg according to a group of experts including Garden Organic, a celebrity gardener, an international sportsman and a national supermarket. The group have come together to encourage more schools to grow fruit and vegetables.

Garden Organic is working in partnership for a second year with the Daylesford Foundation to present organic gardening workshops for teachers and school professionals. The training events are one day courses based in the kitchen garden at the Daylesford Organic Farmshop, Daylesford, Gloucestershire. Teachers will develop their organic gardening knowledge and skills and be able to see large-scale organic growing in situ in the kitchen garden.

Garden Organic’s flagship site will welcome in the new season with a series of outdoor sculpture exhibits in its beautiful ten-acre grounds this summer.

I have no doubt that Alan Titchmarsh’s column in the May edition about the use of peat and pesticides was meant to be provocative and perhaps a little mischievous. This seems to me unhelpful and ill advised at a time when we need with some urgency to work out how we will reduce our carbon footprint sufficiently to allow 9 billion people to inhabit this planet sustainably by 2050.

Phacelia, Clover, Tares, Vetch, gardeners, growers and farmers, know that green manures are good for our soil, until now it has been difficult to find good information on how to use them. Not anymore, thanks to the arrival of ‘Sort out your soil - a practical guide to green manures’ from Garden Organic.

A competition from Garden Organic getting people to show off their creative talents by designing a poster highlighting their passion for compost has led to a fantastic response.

Garden Organic urges supporters and schools to respond to the National Curriculum Review “Call for Evidence” to recommend gardening and food growing as a key life skill.

Garden Organic's response to the DEFRA consultation on the horticultural use of peat.

Rare tomatoes from Garden Organic's collection of endangered vegetables will be made available for gardeners to grow this spring thanks to a new venture with Delfland Nurseries.

More news in our News archive

Note to Editors:

Garden Organic, formally known as HDRA, is the UK's leading organic growing and lifestyle charity dedicated to researching and promoting organic gardening, farming and food.
The charity, which is looking to grow its membership of 40,000, is based at Garden Organic Ryton in Warwickshire and celebrates its 50th year in 2008.
Garden Organic also manages demonstration gardens at Garden Organic Ryton in Warwickshire and Audley End Organic Kitchen Garden in Essex in association with English Heritage. To find out more visit www.gardenorganic.org.uk
The organisation runs major research and international development programmes that play a leading role in helping commercial growers across the UK and overseas adopt organic methods.
Garden Organic actively campaigns on issues vital to both people and the environment, including health, sustainability, climate change, GM trials and Garden Grabbing, among others.
Over 10% of all schools in the UK are now signed up to Garden Organic's educational programme, Duchy Originals Garden Organic for Schools, which helps pupils grow their own organic vegetables.

Our Headquarters, Garden Organic Ryton are five miles south east of Coventry and signposted off the A45. They are open daily. Tel 024 7630 3517.

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