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Alan Chadwick

Alan Chadwick was a brilliant master gardener, a visionary, and an extraordinary source of inspiration for many horticulture students and professional gardeners, past and present. Through those who worked with him, and the constant stream of luminaries, writers, practitioners, and students who visited his magical gardens, Chadwick influenced an entire generation of American gardeners, whether directly or indirectly. In his fertile, productive gardens, Chadwick proved that by following his methods, yields of four to six times the U.S. commercial average for fruits, vegetables, and grains could be achieved, using one-eighth of the water, a quarter of the fertilizer, and one-hundredth of the energy per pound of food produced.

To Chadwick, gardening was in part a spiritual endeavor: an element in the quest for the inner sense of man, a means of shedding light on a vision of creation and nature. He was fascinated by the mystery of nature and the power of its cycles; he saw nature essentially as a giver and forgiver, and he battled constantly to defend it against man's predilection for dominating it. Chadwick saw the garden as our true home and as the ultimate teacher of human culture, and he strove to make his gardens as beautiful, functional, and sustainable as possible.

Alan Chadwick was born into an aristocratic English family in 1909 and trained as a Shakespearean actor. Later, he turned to gardening, although the reasons for this transition have never been clear (indeed, relatively little has been written about Chadwick because the facts were always difficult to establish). Perhaps his upbringing in a well-to-do family (for whom gardening was considered an art form) set him on this path. Through his mother's interests in the Anthroposophical Society, Chadwick was strongly influenced early on by the biodynamic theories of the Austrian philosopher, Rudolf Steiner, and also the French Intensive method of gardening popularized in France in the 1890's. From these main foundations, Chadwick developed the methods that he would teach to his students: double-digging the soil, creating raised beds, using organic fertilizer and rejecting the use of chemicals in any form, sophisticated composting, employing companion planting and beneficial natural predators for pest control.

Chadwick moved to California in the early 1970's when he was invited by the University of California at Santa Cruz to establish a student garden and training program to demonstrate his methods. Dr. Paul Lee, Founder of the UCSC student garden project remembers Chadwick as "tall and handsome, a huge shock of hair, theatrical in demeanor, balletic in bearing." Alan York, past President of the Bio-Dynamic Farming and Gardening Association and orchard keeper, moved from Louisiana to California in the late 1960's and took up a career in gardening. "My life was full, and really good," York recalls. "Then I met this absolute wild man named Alan Chadwick who was growing incredible crops and flowers. He was gardening biodynamically and teaching a bunch of us young people about the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner in his totally unique style. I realized then that I had fallen in love for the first time with growing plants." York worked with Chadwick for three years in the mid-1970's as Head Gardener of the Round Valley Institute for the Study of Man and Nature at Covelo, California, executing Chadwick's directions, managing every detail of the spectacular garden, and supervising a staff of enthusiastic young gardeners.

Hilmar Moore, another former President of the Bio-Dynamic Farming and Gardening Association and an educator who also worked directly with Chadwick, echoes York's experience: "Soon, his incredibly beautiful and productive garden, his inspirational lectures, and his magnetic personality had attracted a devoted group of gardeners." Chadwick also helped develop several other productive gardens in California and Virginia. "His vividly pictorial lectures on the management of fertilization, propagation, irrigation, and cultivation within the cycle of the year, the breathing of the earth, will live as long as people remember his words," recalls Moore.

"Organic gardening before Alan Chadwick was a series of hits and misses: try this, and when it doesn't work, try that," says York. "It was one garden tip after another. It was a time when chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers reigned supreme. Back in Louisiana, I remember DDT being sprayed all over the subdivision we lived in to keep the mosquitoes down. No one questioned anything, and it was an era of better living through chemistry. There was probably no better time for Alan Chadwick to arrive in the United States; there was a whole generation completely disillusioned with the way things were done and who were looking for something that had meaning. This was the generation that turned to counterculture, and when it became apparent that this was not sustainable either, for many it was 'back to the land.'"

York describes the impact that Chadwick made on his gardens and those around him: "Order! All of a sudden, there was order and discipline, and a defined and systematic methodology. Chadwick taught organized methods in his impassioned lectures, and they worked--not just now and then but every time. Chadwick's methodology involved a marriage of the universal principles of classical horticulture with organic gardening. What we all learned, working for him, was that when the discipline of order followed, the results were spectacular."

"Alan Chadwick's gift, I believe, was not so much as a gardener as a storyteller. His storytelling was so skillful that he could create magic with words. This magic allowed those who worked with him to experience things that were still in the future, such as the building of a garden. Weaving his spell, Chadwick created vivid pictures that empowered us to visualize just what a garden could be. He always told us that it is the garden that makes the gardener, and not the other way around. It should be a place of reflection, he would say, where we can once again know that feeling of Paradise and recreate a modern Garden of Eden."

"For those who were fortunate enough to know him," concludes York, "his legacy will always live on because he captured our imaginations and gave us practical skills to turn our dreams into the reality of our lives."

This profile, from our 1999 Gardencycle Day Planner, highlights the life and work of Alan Chadwick, whose inspirational teaching and accomplishments accelerated the acceptance of sustainable organic backyard gardening by a wide audience. Chadwick influenced a generation of gardeners, including the staff of Seeds of Change. Also see How To Grow More Vegetables, our Chadwick Cherry Tomato and our Clarington Forge Double-Digging Tools.