From the archives

I’ve been a member of Garden Organic since I got my first garden in 1992. Apart from supporting an important organisation, membership brings a newsletter and discounts on purchases from the Organic Gardening catalogue. In my early years of gardening I learned a lot from the newsletter. You can also take part in members’ experiments, trying out new ideas for organic ways to deter pests, improve crops or keep weeds at bay. I admit to never having taken part, usually because I’ve never had the particular space or energy available at the right time. Recently I discovered that my late mother-in-law did take part in one of their early experiments, back in 1961, in the days when the organisation was known as the Henry Doubleday Research association. In amongst some of her many papers, we found this letter:

Signed by the organisation’s founder Lawrence D Hills, this letter enclosed marigold (tagetes minuta) seeds to deter ground elder. It is unlikely that my mother-in-law was actually a member of the Henry Doubleday Research Association as she was really not much of a gardener. It is more likely that she was one of the Observer readers, referred to in the letter and was looking for a chemical free way to deal with ground elder in the garden. Sadly she is no longer with us so I can’t ask her whether it worked! Unhelpfully, my husband does not remember either though he may even have joined her sowing the seeds as an enthusiastic toddler. I had a quick look online to see if this method is recommended today. I found a few blog posts that suggested it might work but nothing very official looking. Fortunately I don’t have ground elder in my garden so won’t be needing to try this in the near future.

My, much missed, mother-in-law had too many other preoccupations to spend much time in the garden, although she had a keen interest in sustainable living and alternative ways to navigate life’s challenges. She lived to the age of 92, still interested in the world around her and looking for new ways to live more sustainably. This example from the early 1960s is entirely typical of the kind of thing that she did. The acorn in the blog image symbolises the oak seedlings which we planted in her memory a few years ago.