Henry Doubleday Research Association
Garden Organic, formerly known as the Henry Doubleday Research Association (HDRA), is a UK organic growing charity dedicated to researching and promoting organic gardening, farming and food. The charity maintains the Heritage Seed Library to preserve vegetable seeds from heritage cultivars and make them available to growers.
The Henry Doubleday Research Association (HDRA) was founded in 1954 to research and promote organic gardening, farming, and food. The charity adopted the working name "Garden Organic" in 2005 and is now the UK’s leading organic growing charity. "Henry Doubleday Research Association" remains the legal name under which it is a registered as a charity.
It was founded by horticulturist and freelance journalist Lawrence D Hills and named after Henry Doubleday, an Essex-based Quaker smallholder who had a particular interest in the properties of comfrey.
The organisation was first based at Bocking near Braintree in Essex, hence the name of Bocking 14, a variety of comfrey bred by Hills for its useful properties. A sister organisation was also formed in Australia, the Henry Doubleday Research Association of Australia Inc.
Jackie and Alan Gear took over management of the charity in 1976, and in 1985 the organisation relocated to its present 22-acre (89,000 m2) headquarters site at Ryton-on-Dunsmore near Coventry in the West Midlands. The Gears retired in 2004, when Dr. Susan Kay-Williams became the chief executive and the charity changed its working name to Garden Organic. Dr. Kay-Williams left in the summer of 2007 and the charity appointed Myles Bremner, former Director of Fundraising at children’s charity, NCH. Myles Bremner left in the summer of 2013 and was replaced by James Campbell, former acting chief development officer of the Earthwatch Institute.
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