Garden Organic

Description

Garden Organic is a UK charity dedicated to researching and promoting organic gardening, farming and food.

Its staff and volunteers help people take their first steps in organic growing, from back gardens to community projects. The charity maintains a Heritage Seed Library that conserves hundreds of endangered heritage vegetable varieties. It trains volunteers as Master Composters and runs a Master Gardener Programme that supports mentors and community growing initiatives with local authorities, housing associations and health providers, including work in prisons. It also runs research and international development programmes to help commercial growers adopt organic methods, and an education programme, Garden Organic for Schools, that reaches children in many UK schools.

The organisation was founded in 1954 as the Henry Doubleday Research Association, and adopted the working name Garden Organic in 2005. Its headquarters and demonstration gardens are at Ryton Gardens near Coventry, where it runs more than 30 individual gardens, conference and educational facilities, and a shop selling organic seeds. It has also managed the walled kitchen garden at Audley End in Essex with English Heritage.

Garden Organic relies on funding from supporters and members, offers advice from a team of gardening advisors, and says it reaches millions of beneficiaries worldwide.