Hello...

My journey into the fascinating world of fungi began as a child when my maternal grandparents used to take me foraging for wild edible foods and medicines, they had an extensive knowledge of the outside world as my grandfather was a tree surgeon and forester whilst my grandmother came from a long line of Romany Gypsies.

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I remember being fascinated when my grandmother would walk out of the back door of their cottage saying that she was going "shopping", this confused me as the nearest shops were a 30 minute drive away. Instead, she would disappear into the forest and return an hour or so later with a basket brimming over with leaves, nuts, roots, various fungi and sometimes even a pheasant!

This fascination continued for me into adult life where I established myself as a well known forager, appearing on television shows, numerous radio programmes and as a guest writer for various publications. My passion for sharing this knowledge of wild edible foods and medicines continues to this day where I still teach as often as time allows me to. 

As part of my own journey to learn more about wild foods, I started to delve deep into researching the medicinal powers of fungi (although the law in the UK doesn't allow me to refer to mushrooms as medicines!) , which lead me down so many rabbit holes that I could barely keep up with it. Wether it was watching hours and hours of educational videos and TED talks or by reading mountains of research papers from universities and private medical foundations around the world, it seemed that the information about fungi's ability to help mankind was being updated almost every month. 

So after successfully growing numerous strains of gourmet mushrooms, I turned my attention to growing and developing dual extraction tinctures that had a whole host of potential health benefits for the human body and mind. Wether its Lions Mane Mushroom, a nootropic mushroom famed for its ability to help regrow neural pathways in the brain following traumatic brain injury or female perimonopause & menopause through a process called "Neurogenesis" or Cordyceps a fungi that contains a compound called Cordycepin which has been linked to increased energy levels and its ability to stop the spread of viruses within the body, my research continues to push me ever forward. 

I now grow all of our fungi from single cell wall liquid cultures that I have colonised, isolated and inoculated myself from Agar filled petri dishes all the way up to the final fruiting body. 

This is the one thing that I am most proud of and something that sets us apart from 99.9% of all the other fungi companies in Britain, we grow, harvest and tincture nearly ALL of the mushrooms that go into our products. Unlike other companies, we DON'T buy in mushrooms gathered by other people, we DON'T import dried powders from China that could contain any number of potential contaminants, we DON'T produce mushroom coffee's or dried powder capsules which science has proven are not as effective for the human body as the dual extract liquid tinctures that we DO make - even the University of Queensland confirmed this in an independent study which stated that dual extraction tinctures are seven times more effective than any of the dried powders or mushroom coffees!

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So what about the future?, well, it's simple, we want to grow so that we can provide truly beneficial tinctures to as many people as we can, as we genuinely want to help as many people as we can, as well as a wide variety of both fresh and dried mushrooms.

We want to achieve this in a sustainable way, from reducing the amount of single use plastics by utilising buckets instead of single use plastic bags, to using vertical faming methods to minimise space requirements and recycling our spent fruiting blocks back into compost to provide nourishment for microorganisms and plants alike. 

Our ultimate aim is to provide a safe space where people living with mental health issues can come and spend time in the growing facility, learning new skills, completing mindfullness activities and being surrounded by likeminded supportive individuals. 

If you'd like to know more, why not come visit me for a free tour around the lab and grow facility. You can find me at: 

 

Holden Clough Nurseries

Bolton-by-Bowland

Lancashire 

BB7 4PF

Mobile - 07908790340

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Please check back from time to time on our blog page for updates as we achieve these goals.

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many thanks and mush-love 

Ade