We love research and science, and a trug full of instinct
At RhizoPhyllia we care about nature, humans, and the planet. We’re doing our bit to make the world a better place from the ground up.
It all began on an allotment in 1960s Worcester, where Eddie and his brothers answered their father’s calls for ‘a strong boy’ to help pull up potatoes and scrub parsnips on a freezing February morning. That allotment, the heart of Eddie’s family and the home of many happy early years, sowed the seed for Eddie’s love for rocks, soil, mycology, wildlife, and gardening.
Eddie went on to study Geology at college and university, and after graduating, began work as an Assistant Geologist with Tarmac plc based in Halesowen in the West Midlands.
In 2012, Eddie discovered soil microbiologist, Dr Elaine Ingham, on YouTube, and overnight, he stopped digging.
Eddie realised he had been living a double life: Evangelising the glory of nature and all its interconnectedness, while blindly killing, with apparent kindness, everything he held to be true about nature and the beautiful bugs in his backyard soil.
So, Eddie hung up his beloved rotavator and downed his spade. He stopped pulling roots where they could be snipped and began teasing carrots and parsnips from the ground using compost and mulch more wisely. The results were almost instant.
After studying evolutionary biology and gut microbiology, Eddie took the Foundation Courses and microscopy training at Dr Elaine’s Soil Food Web School. After just one pre-winter of mulching with biologically rich composts, Eddie noticed an incredible difference in the structure of his soil, and in April saw a storm of microarthropods on the soil surface. And worms!
Eddie has memories of charting his way through jungles of 8-foot-tall oilseed rape, and each evening emerging covered in insects. Before heading home, he would liberate as many of the countless worms from the bags of soft, but structured, soil samples, as he could.
Years later, those fields are mostly devoid of that multitude of life; it’s rare to hear any songbirds. Eddie noticed that the soils he was now collecting looked weathered and worn, hard and crusty, or loose and dusty: No place for worms. Inadvertently, intensively farmed soils have become seriously ill.
In 1995, with his young family, Eddie moved to North Wiltshire, where he set about creating his own organic family allotment, happily tilling every April with his shiny rotovator. Despite his best organic efforts, his germination rates were falling, yields were getting smaller, and disease was more prevalent.
Determined to share the enlightenment of the Soil Food Web approach with the farming industry, gardeners, allotmenteers, and smallholders, in March 2022, Eddie and Harry launched RhizoPhyllia.
Their workshops were met with an overwhelming response from amateurs, established gardening professionals, and everyone in between. RhizoPhyllia has since developed and refined its workshops, taken its workshop experience ‘On the Road’ to other gardens and allotments, and invested in a bespoke training studio at its base in Royal Wootton Bassett.
In 2023, RhizoPhyllia won the Assessors Award for Retail Innovation for the educational workshops they showcased at RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival. It’s no surprise that they were invited back!
At the 2024 Festival, RhizoPhyllia built a Show Feature Activity, a garden that traced the ‘Evolution of Plants Through the Microorganisms’. This was an overwhelming success, with many visitors describing it as the best exhibit at the show.
Our values keep our feet on the ground and our goals sky high.
They’re at the root of everything we do.
We do the science, so you don’t have to.
We are life-long learners and firm believers that science doesn’t have to be daunting or complicated.
Nature, gardening, and growing should be enjoyed by everyone. We welcome gardeners and growers from all walks of life and across generations to unite and reconnect with nature.
Soil microbes underpin the health of all who live here on planet Earth. It is vital that we humans reconnect with nature. That starts with rehabilitating, then nurturing and maintaining, the soil habitat and food web.
Severe damage has already been done, but we’ve seen how shifting our approach to growing can transform the health of soil, plants, humans, and hopefully, the planet. The world can change, too — this is just the beginning!
As well as my upcoming workshops dates, you can get information, tips and stories from my back-garden allotment straight into your inbox.