Lawrence D. Hills

Lawrence D. Hills (1911-1991) was a British horticulturalist, journalist, and writer, founder of the Henry Doubleday Research Association (HDRA) in 1954, now Garden Organic. A strong advocate of organic farming, his autobiography is Fighting Like the Flowers (1989). He suffered from coeliac disease, which left him in a wheelchair, until introduced to a wheat-free diet by the woman who became his wife, Cherry Hilda Hills, a noted nutritionist. They had no children. He once said he considered 'the ever-increasing membership of the Henry Doubleday Research Association is family enough for anyone'.

He started his long career in practical horticulture when he was sixteen and wrote his first book mainly in RAF hospitals before being invalided out on D-Day. He was one of Britain's best-known writers on organic gardening. Gardening correspondent of the Observer for eight years, then of Punch and The Countryman. He was Associate Editor of the Ecologist and Compost Science (USA).

His many publications included Fertility Without Fertilisers, Down to Earth Gardening, Grow Your Own Fruit and Vegetables and Organic Gardening.

Lawrence D Hills appeared on television, lectured and broadcast on the radio in Great Britain, the USA, South Africa, Belgium, France, Australia and New Zealand.

Lawrence Hills died in 1990 but was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Coventry University the same year.