Tom Petherick: The Organic Path

About Tom

Consultancy

Tom and Rose on the farm

In the early years after completing my National Diploma in Commercial Horticulture at Oaklands College, Hertfordshire I concentrated on honing my skills by joining the team at The Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall. When I arrived in the autumn of 1993 the project was in its very early stages. The season of 1994 was the first year of cultivation proper in both the formal and walled productive gardens. Working closely with the project’s founders, Tim Smit and John Nelson and the Horticultural Director, former head of RHS Wisley Philip McMillan Browse, I soon found myself running the team responsible for the day to day gardening.

I stayed at Heligan for three years before answering a request from the owners of another large estate in east Cornwall, Newton Ferrers, to help resurrect their very redundant but important nineteenth century landscape. After a year I moved to Dorset where my independent consultancy business began to take on more projects. These included a planting scheme at Trafalgar House near Salisbury, a business plan for the National Trust at Knightshayes Court, similar for the Loyd family at Lockinge near Wantage and a major garden reconstruction for private clients at an eighteenth century property in north Dorset.

In 2000 I was invited back to Heligan to oversee the consolidation of the project in the role of Horticultural Director (Designate). I stayed for a further three years running the gardening team comprising some twelve gardeners while concentrating on maintaining the garden’s number one status as Britain’s Favourite Garden in the ranks of top UK visitor attractions. During the second spell I wrote two books about the gardens (see writing).


Commercial Horticulture

Tom and Rose in the polytunnel

After the first spell at Heligan and the move to Dorset I took leases on two redundant walled gardens in the county, one at Wimborne St Giles, part of the Shaftesbury Estate, and one at Long Crichel. From here I continued to run my consultancy business while also growing organic fruit and vegetables under license from the Soil Association, the UK’s leading organic certification body. The purpose of this was not only to experiment further with soil fertility and organics generally but also to explore the certification process and examine what the future may hold for organics. We now know this movement has entrenched itself in the age of sustainability and appropriate energy use.


India

During my sandwich year at horticultural college I helped restore a run down coffee estate in Tamil Nadu, south India. Before Heligan this was my first taste of how to manage land and staff on a large scale and in challenging conditions. The estate had been badly neglected through regular change of ownership and intensive restoration work was required to encourage the delicate forested environment back into good heart. Soil erosion was chronic, composting and any attempt to build soil fertility on a structured basis was nil. The Tamil forest people derive predominately from a slash and burn culture, forever shifting. In some ways this was project was similar to Heligan in that we had a large landscape to improve and care for and a workforce that needed instruction as well as encouragement.


Current Projects

I have been working for the Prideaux-Brune family at Prideaux Place above Padstow in Cornwall for the last four years in both a consulting and active horticultural capacity. Prideaux dates from 1585 and the restoration of the gardens has had to be handled sensitively and with precision in order to maintain this precious landscape. I also have a number of other private clients whom I visit on a regular basis.

I am a founder member of the Walled Kitchen Gardens Network and we are currently working on a plan to restore the Bishop’s Palace Walled Garden. In Hammersmith, London on behalf of the London Borough of Fulham and Hammersmith. The council has received Heritage Lottery Funding to restore these wonderful gardens that are found on the north bank of the River Thames and which run from the east end of the Fulham Palace Road all the way to Putney Bridge.

Meanwhile at home I am experimenting with biodynamics on my ten acre holding in Devon, establishing a suckler herd of South Devon cattle, and running half an acre of productive gardens and the same of orchard and ornamental gardens. I am coming up to full biodynamic status under the Demeter certification symbol and find this extraordinary method of gardening with the phases of the moon amongst other techniques to be yielding some astonishing results.

I am also a part time inspector for Demeter UK, which entails visiting biodynamic farms, holdings and horticultural enterprises for certification purposes.


Media

Tom in his garden

Since the mid 1990’s I have written for a variety of newspaper and magazines including the Saturday Telegraph, the Sunday Times, Gardens Illustrated, Hortus, and Country Life. I am currently writing a monthly column for the Saturday Telegraph entitled Go Organic.

I have written four books:

Heligan, A Portrait of the Lost Gardens (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2004). This story of my time at the gardens had added poignancy as my family home is not four miles from the gardens and my grandfather convalesced in Heligan House in 1915 after the battle of Gallipoli.

My second book about Heligan, The Kitchen Garden at Heligan, also published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson appeared in 2005.

Trees That Shape The World (Quadrille 2006) is an illustrated book looking at the importance of trees both to the landscape and to the people of the six major biomes in which they are found.

Sufficient (Pavilion 2007) is a practical guide to sustainable living based on my own experiences in the world of horticulture. This book allowed to me write from the heart and these are the tools I carry with me when looking at landscapes and projects whether my own or for other clients. It is how I garden and is very much a polemic.


Presenting

Since 2004 I have presented an extensive series of gardening DVD’s with the production company HCA. Initially commissioned to produce a four box set entitled England’s Favourite Gardens (Heligan, Alnwick, Tresco Abbey Gardens, Newby Hall) our scope widened to include several National Trust Gardens (which went to broadcast on UK Gardening Channel) and a series of some fifteen ‘how-to’ DVD’s which are widely available through RHS Wisley, National Trust shops, Wyevale Garden Centres and on line at www.dancing-bee.co.uk


Education