The Most Pioneering Edible Garden in the UK | Huw's Garden Journal #7

I haven’t seen anything else quite like it! Plus other highlights from my enjoyable week-long filming trip.

Wow! What a week it has been! Full of so much learning, inspiration, and fantastic conversations. Now of course I took my camera, and I am very excited to have captured many videos to release over the winter months.

This journal is a whistle-stop summary of the places I visited, sharing some of the things which stood out the most. I arrived back home last night (Aberystwyth, Wales) and I’m writing this journal whilst sitting in a cafe sheltering from the rain. I’ve yet to visit the garden - I think that can wait until tomorrow!

This week I also had my author evening at Knepp Estate (which I took the opportunity to grab some additional footage of the walled garden - image above - for the video I filmed there the other week). Thank you to everyone who came, it was a very special evening. And thank you to those I met yesterday when I spoke at the Worthy Earth Festival in Hampshire.

The garden has not been abandoned, Sam and Llŷr have been busy and kept an eye on everything, and with my trip alongside the projects and ideas Sam and Llŷr have, this autumn will be a fun one of planning the next steps for the garden and its surroundings - which I hope you can join in with too!

Baddaford Farm Collective

Baddaford Farm, the home of Guy and Geetie Singh-Watson, nestled in a valley a few miles north of Totnes, it is a growing hub of incredible land-based enterprises. It’s the kind of place that fills you with excitement, and it’s the people there that make it possible.

Image: Baddaford farm in the early evening

Of the enterprises there, I filmed with Vital Seeds, Mandy of Incredible Vegetables, and Sophie of Pigment Plant Dyes.

I hadn’t realised just how amazing the setup was at Vital Seeds - they had an incredible range of seed crops and the coolest printer I have ever seen which they use for their seed packets. Looking around their site, and seeing the varieties they grew, was a very useful way of taking note of things I need to try out next year! One is Flaming Barrel beetroot and the seeds are available now.

Meeting Mandy Barber of Incredible Vegetables was a dream come true! Her dedication to trialling and making so many rare edible plants available is an inspiration, and there are so many more perennials on my list to grow. Saltbush and everlasting onions are two examples that I am absolutely featuring next year.

As with Vital Seeds and Incredible Vegetables, I have to say that seeing the plants growing in person is a very effective way of wanting to then also grow those plants myself! Just look at these Rudbeckias grown by Vital Seeds…

I hadn’t planned to film Pigment Plant Dyes initially but after seeing the dye garden (image below) and thinking about how it is yet another fantastic yield that can be grown naturally from the land, both Sophie and I managed to carve out a spare fraction of time to make a video possible. This will be a video for Regenerative Films that explores the opportunities and challenges around producing fabric dyes for the UK market.

Thank you too to Phillipa, Flossie, Guy and Geetie from Baddaford Farm Collective for being fantastic hosts and support during my visit.

Birch Farm

Wearing my permaculture hat, this was my standout visit. The name ‘Joshua Sparkes’ (pictured below) has been increasingly popping up around me for quite a few months, and so I knew I just had to visit. It did not disappoint. Joshua and his team (Jack & Russell - but not the dog breed!) have formed what I believe is one of the most exciting and important edible growing sites in the UK. I haven’t seen anything else quite like it.

Taking inspiration from his time in Japan and applying Japanese Natural Farming principles alongside pioneering the adapting of syntropic farming to a temperature climate, Joshua has made a thriving paradise in a very short space of time.

I don’t often get as inspired as much as I did from this visit, and I couldn’t help but talk about it at Knepp and Worthy Earth. I am VERY interesting to see how this garden further develops over the coming growing seasons, and will be watching closely.

The aerial view of the vegetable growing area of Birch Farm (image below) is as impressive as it looks on the ground.

Why am I so excited about this garden? Joshua is really pushing the boundaries of conventional ‘market gardening’ in the UK, and builds fertility by prioritising plant matter rather than compost. I love this. This is a huge step towards how we can create highly resilient farms and gardens that are not dependant on shipping in tons of compost every single year.

This garden goes against a lot of common advice for growing in the UK. For example the use of chop and drop to build fertility and not being overrun by slugs because Joshua considers himself first and foremost a beetle farmer.

He also uses and encourages weeds to act as natural cover crops to protect beds over winter!

What I’m very interested in exploring is how Joshua's approach can be adapted and translated on a home/allotment scale. This will be one of the things I will begin to explore on my own land next year.

I have of course filmed a video here, but also used Joshua as the guinea pig to record my first ever podcast episode which dives into great depth about his approach, goals and learnings and I hope will be an inspirational and thought-provoking listen.

Thank you too to the Woolsery Collective, which Birch Farm is a part of and supplies the restaurant, for your amazing hospitality during my stay and to chef Ciz. It was also quite the experience that this year’s Masterchef winner, Brin Pirathapan, was sat at the table next to me. We of course had a very good natter about all things food!

The Agroforestry Research Trust

I first met Martin Crawford around 5/6 years ago when I did my Permaculture Design Course in Devon and we went of a tour around his mature food forest. Martin, who has founded the Agroforestry Research Trust, is one of my greatest inspirations. His books were amongst the first permaculture-related books I ever bought, and his plant shop is a great resource!

To have both Mandy and Martin in such close proximity of each other (just down the road), considering the work they do to promote perennial crops, is staggering. On the theme of staggering, look how amazing these produce and preserving shelves are at Martin’s research site! What a dream!

Unlike my first visit, this visit I had my camera, and also went to his newer site, which has numerous different growing spaces of different scales - from field scale nut orchards to backyard forest gardens. One of the favourite videos I filmed on the whole trip was Martin showing us some of his favourite edible shrubs that he grows, and why us gardeners should give them a try too!

Gravetye Manor

How’s that for a Kitchen Garden?! The final video I filmed this week was of the unique walled garden at Gravtye Manor, where I interviewed Head Gardener Tom Coward. It was such an inspirational place, but right after the main interview was done, the only thunderstorm in the area decided to make Gravetye the core target for a good hour (see below), and I don’t think I’ve experienced such heavy rain in my life! One of my cameras got a little too wet and started miss-behaving, but thank goodness it has since dried and is back to normal! The rain was eventually replaced with sun, and I could finally go ahead and finish filming.

Here is a summary of the videos I filmed this week which you can look forward to:

1. Many Barber on perennial vegetables

2. A chat with Mandy about the opportunity market gardens have with perennial vegetables (RF)

3. Vital Seeds with Fred Groom and Ronja Schlumberger

4. Organic dye growing with Sophie Holt (RF)

5. Birch Farm introduction with Joshua Sparkes

6. Gravetye Manor kitchen garden with Tom Coward

7. 10 Edible shrubs to grow in small-medium sized gardens with Martin Crawford

8. Growing nuts and nut orchard opportunities with Martin Crawford (RF)

(RF) = For my other channel, Regenerative Films

Plus 3 Podcast Episodes:

1. Joshua Sparkes on natural farming and adapting syntropic agriculture to a temperate climate

2. Geetie Singh-Watson on sustainable hospitality and role of restaurants for a positive food future

3. Guy Singh-Watson on the current organic climate, perennial food systems, and the role of a farmer in today’s day and age

I would love to know which videos in particular interest you the most and perhaps the most popular one is something I can release early on Substack?

Final words

I feel very much energised from my trip - there are a lot of ideas I cannot wait to try out myself. I believe that you can learn something from every garden you visit, and this last week has certainly proven that to me. Even a massive kitchen garden like Gravetye can give ideas for small spaces, such as choices of varieties or how the kitchen garden has a hole at the lowest point of the wall to let cool air out, but one thing I will be actively seeking next year is urban/micro scale projects too.

Now I am home there is much to catch up on before a new week starts, but this coming Saturday will be a Huw’s Garden Diaries which I cannot wait to film!

Best wishes,

Huw

PS - Have you seen my favourite way to cook beetroot? It is so easy and so tasty you almost feel like it is cheating - and that is without needing any other ingredients!