You can tell a lot about a person from their Instagram. That of Sheila Das (before she started her new job at the National Trust where she is “still learning the protocols of taking photos at work”) is full of people – always smiling and often clearly belly laughing. You’ll also find pictures of gifts people have given her – extraordinary cakes complete with mycorrhizal networks permeating the sponge ‘soil’; blankets crocheted with an extensive ecosystem of bacteria, fungi, insects and veg – that must have taken hours to make and are testament to the affection people have for her.
Realising that I’m going to be involved in a part of the journey of Munstead Wood was really special
It’s entirely mutual. Sheila bubbles over with admiration for those she’s worked with. “I feel so privileged to have met some of the most incredible and inspiring people through horticulture,” she says.
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She’s quick to pay credit to her day-to-day work colleagues and, among the more well-known, cites her former boss at RHS Garden Wisley, Matthew Pottage, “with his crazy, maverick energy”; no-dig expert Charles Dowding; Great Dixter’s Fergus Garrett; and fruit tree expert Nick Dunn who gave her the courage to revamp the orchard at Wisley, of which more later. “I say their names out loud and think, ‘wow, I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to count them as friends’,” she says.
The landscape and the climate are changing too and so we all need to learn to think differently, but the good news is that we don’t need to do it on our own – we can share and learn from each other
Sheila made the shift from logistics and project management to horticulture via Kew’s three-year diploma. “I’m bossy and organised,” she says. “And managing people in a warehouse is no different to managing people in a garden – except that your setting is nicer.” She had her first taste of the generosity of the gardening community early on. “I was working at Wrest Park and I had a question about something, so I phoned Sarah Wain and Jim Buckland at West Dean, whom I’d met once on a training day. They were very much the ‘rock gods’ of horticulture at the time, but I couldn’t believe how warm and welcoming they were. They were just keen to share their knowledge.”
With her trademark sunny optimism she has pursued and promoted peer learning and exchange alongside formal qualifications ever since and admits she is “borderline obsessed” with training and opportunities for gardeners.
“Gardening is not a well-paid job, particularly in the charity sector, and yet gardeners require an enormous amount of knowledge and skills, so attracting and retaining talented people is a huge challenge,” she says. “The landscape and the climate are changing too and so we all need to learn to think differently, but the good news is that we don’t need to do it on our own – we can share and learn from each other. If I were being cheesy I’d say that I see the future of horticultural training as an ecosystem of connections and friendships – almost like a mycorrhizal network.”
This brings us to Sheila’s other great passion: soil. She has become a leading proponent of no-dig and soil health, ironic for someone whose greatest pleasure used to be single-digging her mum’s allotment. “I feel quite annoyed that when I studied, we only really talked about the physics and chemistry of soil, never about its biology, often focusing on its inevitable ‘wrongness’ for whatever we wanted to grow. Now, learning about the life in it and all the amazing things that happen because of it, it’s become a source of real joy.”
She’s a keen grower of edibles, and cabbages are her passion: “It blows my mind how you can grow something heavier than a human baby from a tiny seed in the space of six months.”
She is also keenly interested in nutrition and the evidence that plants that are grown harder (without fertilisers and irrigation) contain higher concentrations of the vitamins, phytochemicals and polyphenols our bodies need. Both these strands of thought are apparent in the landmark projects she oversaw during her ten-year stint at RHS Garden Wisley: the acclaimed World Food and Wellbeing Gardens, which opened in 2021, and in the orchard there, which she and her team completely revitalised. “It was on life-support, with irrigation, chemicals and feeds,” says Sheila. Now, a mosaic of landscape habitats is being established by using green manures and yellow rattle, introducing hügelkultur, and allowing standing dead wood, among many other measures; and not only is the soil becoming healthier, but the wildlife and biodiversity are rocketing too.
It blows my mind how you can grow something heavier than a human baby from a tiny seed in the space of six months
Leading on new projects is also a key responsibility in Sheila’s new role at the National Trust, and none is more eagerly awaited than the opening of Gertrude Jekyll’s former garden at Munstead Wood, which the Trust purchased in 2023. “Realising that I’m going to be involved in a part of the journey of Munstead Wood was really special,” says Sheila. True to form, it’s not Jekyll’s love of colour that excites Sheila most, nor her tremendous industry, but the way she related to and worked with others. “I’m hoping that we’ll be able to reconnect Gertrude Jekyll, Ellen Willmott and William Robinson through the plants in the garden there – telling the story of three leading horticulturists who were also great friends.
Useful information:
The National Trust cares for more than 200 gardens and parks across the UK, including historic gardens and parklands. Find out more at nationaltrust.org.uk
Portrait by Andrew Montgomery
