We first obtained soil association organic certification in 1996 and Rosey and Phelim started trading as Arcadia Organics, growing fruit and vegetables on over 10 acres and running a successful box scheme for 12 years before focusing on farmers’ markets.

We were a regular at Bath Farmers’ Market until 2012, the year it rained all summer, which on our heavy soil and already high rainfall area was a disaster. We fared better than a lot of growers but it still took a big toll.

So we stopped growing, Rosey retired, Phelim trained as an electrician, then met Tom and Henry who went on to found Bristol Fungarium, and began the mushroom journey.

We started in 2019 pasteurising straw bales which were broken up into 25L tubs along with oyster mushroom spawn with some success, before switching to buying in ready to fruit sawdust blocks from the Netherlands to grow on in insulated shipping containers. This gave us the opportunity to grow a much wider range of mushrooms, which were sold to restaurants and shops in the Bristol area.

During the covid pandemic the quality of the imported blocks deteriorated, so we slowly started to make our own using steel barrels with a immersion heater to sterilise the sawdust substrate, gaining experience.

Tom and Henry moved to a much larger site in Barrow Guerney in 2021 where they have specialised in making medicinal tinctures, while Phelim carried on growing exotic mushrooms on a smaller scale on our holding in Claverham to sell back at Bath Farmers’ Market.

Vicky had been working at Wessex Plants in Congresbury, involved with growing millions of module grown plants every year, she began growing cut flowers in our empty polytunnels in 2020, setting up Bay Tree Herbs and supplying local florists, before also growing for Abel and Cole.