The Good Gardeners' Association

Here's a little blast from the past for all you organic gardeners. I've been sent this image of a Good Gardeners' Association newsletter dated 1 December 1972 - it starts off:

My Dear Fellows,

Greetings at this festive season! May you have a blessed Christmas with lots of Compost-grown Vegetables to eat and lots of Compost-grown Flowers in your vases. I shall even have a Compost-grown Goose!

The image was sent to me by Landscape juice reader, Roger Booth, who asks if this is the same organisation started by Sherwell-Cooper in the 1960s?

Yes Roger, it is and you can read its interesting history here.

Dr. Wilfred Edward Shewell-Cooper MBE (1900 – 1982) established the Good Gardeners' Association which officially became a charity in 1966 with the aims:

• To improve and encourage horticulture using compost and organic principles.
• The daily study of organic methods of gardening
• Research and experimental work into minimum work methods in the garden
• To disseminate the results of such research among horticulture colleges, gardeners and schools
• To publicise by what ever means, the great benefits to be derived from the use of compost.

During the war years 1940-46, Sherwell-Cooper became the Command Horticultural Officer with the responsibility to investigate the art of composting and to encourage people to grow their own food. His lasting legacy, of which he is probably most famous, is the no-dig approach to horticulture.

Although the Good Gardeners' Association became an official charity in 1966, it's not so clear when it was actually born but there is a reference in the Good Gardeners' Association website that refers to Sherwell-Cooper taking a position on the Soil Association board after 1946 but left after his suggestion that the Soil Association includes gardeners and horticulturists in their work, rather than just farmers - as was the Soil Associations objective.

Sherwell-Cooper left the Soil Association after twenty years to concentrate on the Good Gardeners' Association, he bought Arkley Manor in Barnett, Hertfordshire and set it up as the charity's headquarters, where he worked until his death in 1982.

At the height of its influence, the Good Gardeners' Association membership stood at over 4,000 and visitors to Arkley Manor reached 10,000 in one year but by the time of his death membership had dropped by ninety percent to just 400.

The Good Gardeners Association is still in existence to this day.

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