WARBURTON'S own home garden puts his theories into practical use. Contibuted Photo If you could grow your garden twice as big as it is with half the work, while adhering to the Laws of Nature, doing no digging, using no chemicals and causing no harm - would you?

There is the New School of Gardening, with classes going on now in Hockley Valley where you can learn exactly how all the above are accomplished.

It has taken schoolmaster and landscape artist David Warburton years of going against Nature's grain to understand the folly of this approach to gardening.

While he has always endeavoured to garden in as ecologically sound a way as possible, avoiding the use of chemicals, etc., it is only over the last five years that enough information and his own studies of the subject have really brought him to the revelations that he shares in his classes.

That which he has humbly labeled as "Warburton's Law", the main tenet of his teachings, is "the more closely one's garden follows the Laws of Nature, the less one has to work and the more successful one's garden will be; conversely, the more one flouts the Laws of Nature, the harder one has to work at gardening and the less success one will have with the garden."

To learn the Laws of Nature, one begins with observation.

Take a farmer's field that has been abandoned. Law number one says that there shall be no open spaces. Weeds, which are annuals, fill open spaces. They are a distinct sub group of plants, which grow quickly from seed and then seed again rapidly. So the first plants to carpet the abandoned field are the weeds - thistle and small annual weeds.

Over the ensuing time, the hardier perennials will invade and take over the space in a relentless domination of the open ground.

Following them will come the "woodies": the shrubs, poplar, ash, hawthorn and feral apples.

Eventually, inevitably, will come the larger trees and the field will turn from a seemingly open and barren patch of land to a meadow, an open woodland, a woodland. In covering the land, the plant life takes over, in succession, from the least to the most mature growth.

Now there will be no weeds; there will be flowers, clover, grasses, bushes, and trees. Where no one has worked, Nature has created a perfect garden, with no open spaces. So, this Law is the law of succession. It is inexorable.

Eternally the case, it is actually a revelation and the foundation for a gardening revolution.

A garden's base is its soil. For years, soil was analysed by chemical engineers, who dissected it while ignoring the life within it, and reported on its chemical structure. Based on their findings, industry developed presumably complimentary chemicals meant to enhance the soil and increase growth of crops.

However, in the last few years soil biologists have delved into the biology of soil. They have brought to light the absolute importance of the microbes that make up the life of soil.

Soil biologists have proven that to till the soil, to turn it over, reversing the order in which it naturally lies is, basically, to destroy the microbes living - and needing to stay - under the surface of the soil and, hence, the soil itself is ruined.

As Mr. Warburton explains it, the layers of the soil are a "lasagna" of microbes, each in their proper order for the functions they have to perform.

Soil has been evolving for billions of years to reach this point of perfect organization, as it were. Rearrange the pattern of the soil and you kill off its potential. Then you need to start adding fertilizers, etc. to undo the harm that you have done, but, in fact, wrecking the soil further with the introduction of chemicals.

In other words, that spring ritual of getting outside and turning/digging the garden is wholly the wrong way to start!

All that back breaking work - or worst rototilling, with the waste of energy in so many ways - is actually wrecking your garden. Sticking your tomatoes in open ground, in rows, then bending for hours to dig out the weeds; planting whole gardens of expensive annuals; pouring money and fertilizer into your land are all traditional ways of gardening here. They are all now obsolete. Good news.

Says David Warburton, "A garden should have no open ground. Where there are spaces between plants, we lay down mulch as does nature. In the fashion of those beautiful Victorian gardens, there are no rows, but a mix of flowers, herbs and vegetables, both for pest control and aesthetics. We blend in shrubs and woodies, which provide habitat for predators of insects, virtually eliminating the need for insecticides.

Last year, gardens that Mr. Warburton designed and created for his many clients were featured in every gardening magazine in Canada, two of which - "House and Home" and "Gardening Life" - placed the stories on their covers.

He was also pleased to feature largely in an edition of the American magazine, "Country Living". This publicity meant that his designs, based on his principles of adhering to Nature's ways are gaining serious recognition. It is, after all, a crusade.

With a view to spreading the news and the skills as far as possible, Mr. Warburton is conducting his classes in his workshop in Hockley Valley. The classes are instructions on soil conservation and the endless variations on how to grow essentially weed-free gardens.

For more information on how to get the best for your garden for, literally, half the work, you can register at 519-942-4129 or at grow@ tillingthesoul. com.

Up the revolution!