How RHS Wisley helped win the war with Dig for Victory

IT IS now at the forefront of efforts to strip gardening back to its roots, with minimal chemical input. But a new permanent exhibition at its Old Laboratory reveals RHS Wisley’s key role in shaping intensive agriculture via the wartime Dig for Victory campaign.

Tomorrow, Wisley in Surrey, will open the doors for the first time to its Old Laboratory, where for more than a century it conducted research into horticulture and trained student gardeners.

Royal Horticultural Society staff have been digging into the attics and longforgotten cupboards of the early-20th century building.

Among the finds are details of how students and gardeners helped develop the science for the Dig for Victory campaign during the Second World War.

Fiona Davison, head of RHS libraries and exhibition, said: “Everyone knows the iconic poster, but what’s less known is that the actual horticulture underneath it came out of this garden.

“They set up trial fields and worked out, through experimentation, what was the crop rotation that would maximise the number of calories you could grow on an allotment.”

The science learnt at Wisley was disseminated to scout groups, town halls and gardeners across the land via a government information campaign that came to shape agricultural science for decades to come. The Dig for Victory campaign and its scientific emphasis on maximising productivity, often at the expense of biodiversity, has been blamed for the countryside’s many ills.

Ms Davison said: “A lot of the science was about how we kill things. It’s a very control and conquer mindset. Most powerful herbicides and pesticides

‘A lot of the science was about how we kill things. Most powerful pesticides took off in that period’

really took off in the Second World War.

“But that’s no longer the driving force behind our science, and our advice is entirely flipped on its head. ”

The RHS now avoids pesticide use in its gardens and advocates a more “planet-friendly” gardening.

Among the other finds in the archives was an early warning to gardeners about not spraying apple trees in bloom for fear of killing beneficial pollinators.

And in the permanent display is daffodil boiling machine to kill narcissus eelworm, which ultimately saved the plant from extinction in 1916.