Charles Dowding

Charles Dowding (born 1959) is an English horticulturalist and author who has pioneered modern no dig and organic soil management in the UK since 1983. Life and work Dowding spent his childhood on a dairy farm in Somerset. He graduated from his degree in geography at Cambridge University in 1980, having been influenced by environmental writers such as Rachel Carson. In the 1980s he worked for a hotel in the Hebrides. Dowding joined the Soil Association and began with his own organic, no dig market gardening, interested in improving quality of soil, while making a vegetable garden beautiful, ornamental, productive and supportive of biodiversity. He became influenced by the approaches of gardeners such as Ruth Stout, who championed strategies of leaving organic matter on the soil surface, rather than working it into the soil.