The Vegan Gardener

By harnessing the power of plants to grow more plants, my garden – which at the outset was always intended to be organic – quietly became vegan by stealth. Realising I had crafted a vibrant, nature-filled and no-dig garden from scratch, and was able to sustain it without lifting a forkful of manure, or any of the other grisly by-products (dried blood, bonemeal) of the animal-exploiting meat, dairy, poultry and fishery industries, filled me with an unexpected buzz. That same buzz has taken my growing, as well as my thinking about how what I do in my garden affects our natural world, way beyond just organic gardening. My veganic gardening journey delights and surprises and teaches me something new each day, and I know of no better way to bring beauty and abundance into our beleaguered, changing world.

Author Biography

John Walker is an award-winning gardening and environmental writer with over 40 years’ experience in horticulture, teaching and garden media. He trained at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where he was awarded the Kew Diploma in Horticulture. He was features/deputy editor of Garden Answers magazine, and contributing editor of Kitchen Garden magazine. His long-running `Digging Deeper’ column, exploring the connections between gardening and our environment, first appeared in Organic Gardening magazine in 2006. John also writes about greener gardening for national newspapers and magazines in the UK including The Telegraph and the Royal Horticultural Society’s journal The Garden. He wrote Weeds: An Earth-Friendly Guide to their Identification, Use and Control, and The Bed & Border Planner, and contributed to the Garden Organic Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening. John has made an earth-friendly eco garden in his home in north Wales. He has won the British Garden Media Guild Environmental Award three times. He can be found at www.earthfriendlygardener.net.