Yay for Yeo!

More than 3,000 people attended the Yeo Valley Organic Garden Festival this year - and it was a fantastic celebration of organic gardening. We attended as the festival’s official charity partner with our CEO Fiona Taylor and head of Heritage Seed Library Catrina Fenton participating in talks across the event.

At Thursday’s talk, ‘Future Proofing your Garden in the Face of Climate Change’,  with Nicola Hope and the Yeo Valley gardening team, Fiona talked about the complicated growing year. She shared anecdotes about the impact the intense heatwaves had on our demonstration garden and Heritage Seed Library. 

On Saturday, at the ‘Shed 101’, hosted by horticulturist Nigel Cox, Fiona shared the stage with conservationist and author Dave Goulson, Errol Reuben Fernandes, head of horticulture at the Horniman, and Skoolbeanz creator Lara Honnor. Taking inspiration from the popular series Room 101, Fiona decided she would leave ‘box hedge’ in her Shed 101! (Do you agree? Email us at [email protected] with your thoughts.)

Catrina Fenton, our head of the Heritage Seed Library also delivered daily talks in the Glasshouse Gathering area, where she shared tips on seed saving heritage vegetables. Attendees were able to take away some of our unique heritage vegetables including climbing French bean varieties ‘Cherokee Trail Of Tears’, ‘Mrs Lewis's Purple Pod’ and ‘District Nurse’. 

We were also thrilled that our raffle, which included prizes from Niwaki, Evengreener and Beevive, raised a whopping £850 for our charity! 

Volunteers worked closely with our gardening team to build and construct the garden, and helped staff on the stand throughout the three-day festival. We gave people gardening advice on everything from drought and box blight to everyone’s favourite subject - slugs!  

Here’s what some of the diligent volunteers had to say:

Janet Manning
“It was such a privilege to be part of the festival and create a compost demonstration garden – based on Kate Davies’s beautiful design. The idea was to recycle green garden waste to create long-lasting structures that also make cozy homes for wildlife. Smaller prunings, whips and climbing plant prunings are great for weaving between more sturdy sticks and this technique was used to build border edging, compost wigwams, archways over paths, wreath bases, trellis, and a willow daisy. 

“The wood buried below the soil will feed the soils fungal community, beetles, and other detritivores. By drilling holes in the wood above ground, solitary bees and predatory wasps will use them as nest sites. Features built in this way are drier and more aerated than in a traditional bin or heap so the process will take longer but is likely to also produce less damaging greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide.”

Kate Davies 
“The three days following the build were wonderful; we had many fantastic and varied conversations with festival goers young and old. The one thing that all the discussions had in common was the passion everyone showed for caring for their soil. They wanted to know how to provide organic matter to support soil structure and feed the soil organisms, which are vital for growing strong and healthy flowers, fruit, and veg.

“Our beautifully woven willow and hazel structures led to lots of meaningful conversations – and many people left willing to put a little more love into their compost heaps! I hope they will have been inspired to go home and look at their gardens with a new sense of wonder and appreciation for all the magnificent things that can be achieved by making great compost.”