Background
Born in Byfleet, his father was a gardener and his uncle was head gardener to the Earl of Selborne.
(This illustrated volume was compiled as a 'companion' to ...)
This illustrated volume was compiled as a 'companion' to The Victorian Kitchen Garden, a book written by Jennifer Davies to record the re-making of the Chilton Garden located near Hungerford in Berkshire, England, approx. 70 miles west of London and the re-discovery of the old plant varieties its walls once contained. It is also a tribute to the garden itself, and to all those who helped in its restoration. It is not a book to be followed, word for word, for practical instruction, although the comments, tips and stories provided by the co-author Harry Dodson head gardener at Chilton for over forty years will most certainly prove useful and inspirational for many gardeners. It is an entertaining reminder of a year in the cloistered yet productive world of the nineteenth-century kitchen garden. As The Cottage Gardener and Country Gentleman's Companion commented in 1856, "Some people may say 'This reading and writing so much, what good is it?'... In gardening matters it is this good - you can refer to the past, and see how it corresponds with the present, and, from the experience thus gained, the course for the future can be the more easily shaped out."
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Born in Byfleet, his father was a gardener and his uncle was head gardener to the Earl of Selborne.
Horticulture was in his family. He left school at 14, and over the next six years worked his way up from garden boy to journeyman. In 1937 he started work at Stansted Park as a "young improver journeyman" in the kitchen garden.
When the Second World War started he served briefly in France, but was discharged on medical grounds.
He was appointed general garden foreman at Leigh Park in Hampshire. The large house had been commandeered by the Admiralty and Dodson"s task was to grow enough food for several hundred people every day.
In 1947 he was appointed head gardener at the Chilton Estate, near Chilton Foliat, growing flowers and vegetables for the household in an extensive walled garden, with heated greenhouses and 200 yards of cloches. By 1981 the cost of maintaining the garden had become too high for its owner.
He made it over to Dodson, who ran it as a commercial nursery.
He was a successful exhibitor at the Royal Horticultural Society"s shows, and in 1956 he joined the fruit and vegetable committee and served as a judge at its shows for nearly 50 years. In 1984, Jennifer Davies of the British Broadcasting Corporation was looking for a venue for a projected television programme on traditional methods of vegetable gardening, to be called The Victorian Kitchen Garden. Finally, she discovered the walled garden at Chilton Foliat, and its head gardener, Harry Dodson.
He did not claim to be a Victorian gardener himself, but he had learned his trade from men who had been, and he understood the techniques they had developed.
The series was screened in 1987, when he was 68, and its popularity spawned three other British Broadcasting Corporation series — The Victorian Kitchen, The Victorian Flower Garden and The Wartime Kitchen and Garden. The accompanying books were best-sellers.
Dodson became a popular personality and in 1992 wrote his own book about growing vegetables, Harry Dodson"s Practical Kitchen Garden. He died at Chilton Foliat in 2005 aged 85.
(This illustrated volume was compiled as a 'companion' to ...)