Join no dig pioneer Charles Dowding for a family session teaching no dig gardening to children & adults!
Charles Dowding is a keen gardener and teacher who wants to share the no dig gardening message and encourage children as well as adults to grow their own vegetables. Charles starts this event with a short presentation to the children where he will engage them with a fun question and answer session. He discusses soil life and it’s important job of helping our plants to thrive, as well as looking at how we can help by feeding soil life with the addition of compost.
There will be a practical element where children will help Charles make a new no dig bed and see how easy it is to start their own growing journey. Each child will take home small goodie bag containing a gardening project to start at home. Charles Dowding’s No Dig Children’s Gardening Book will be available in the shop to buy!
Bios
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Charles Dowding
Charles Dowding
Charles has made no dig popular and widely used. He develops and explains other time and labour saving methods of gardening, high yielding and nature friendly. Including quick ways of growing and picking salad leaves, multi-sowing vegetables to grow in clumps, making and using compost.
Since 1982 he has created and cropped four no dig market gardens on different soils, from stone to silt to clay. In the 1980s he cropped 7.5 acres (3ha) of no dig beds. In the 1990s he farmed in France.
Currently he grows vegetables on a third of an acre in Somerset, SW England zone 8. He sells £20,000 of harvests locally, mainly salad leaves, and the vegetables are a key part of course lunches at Homeacres.
There are two crops a year from beds which are cheap to establish and quick to maintain. Charles’ methods are easy to understand and work on small areas as well as large ones. No dig scales up and down easily.
Charles' mission is to encourage as many people as possible to grow their own. Gardening with the no dig method is beneficial for a healthy mind and body, and protects soil life. Carbon is trapped in the ground so there is a general benefit too.
He has written fourteen books and an annual calendar of sowing dates, runs a You Tube channel with 68 million views and over 630,000 subscribers, writes for national gardening magazines, and gives talks and courses at home and abroad. He has created three online courses, No Dig Gardening, Skills for Growing and From Seed to Harvest.
