Land & Food

In our two-acre produce garden, we act as a part of nature, not a visitor. We work with what the land offers – observing and responding, not imposing. We grow crops that best suit this land and that it can produce abundantly. In this way, we create a foragable environment that may at first glance seem messy, but closer inspection reveals a mosaic of abundant food for both humans and wildlife. You’ll find a wide array of veg, fruit, living pathways, ‘weeds’, ponds, solar panels, composting bays, bee hives, invertebrates, and small mammals. 

The permaculture garden is a ‘practicing’ space, more like a yoga studio than a commercial vegetable farm. The practice of yoga is to connect deeply with yourself, breathe, slow down, and ground. The byproduct is a healthier, happier, more flexible body and mind.

The practice of permaculture is working with nature to nourish ourselves. The byproducts are the fruit, vegetables, eggs and meat. A central focus of the garden is the human element, offering opportunities to ground and to learn. 

Our human-scale farming approach allows our guests to reconnect with food in relationship to land. We recommend you visit during your stay – come and get your hands dirty. The doors are always open – but please close them behind you to stop the wild boar from entering! 

Join our regular Volunteer Day  or add a private ‘Growing Food with Head, Heart & Hands‘ experience to your stay.

Our woodland mushroom project stems from the deep knowing that nature loves to provide for us. In 2019 we set about getting to know our native mushrooms and understand what they needed so that we could create the perfect conditions for them to thrive. This style of farming is essentially bio-mimicry – copying what nature does naturally. 

We use an ancient log-growing technique – the first-ever documented farming methodology. It’s slow, sustainable, and produces entirely different results from agri-industrial methods. Our mushrooms are grown outdoors, on wood coppiced wood from this land. They are Vitamin D-rich and nutrient-dense. They hold immense medicinal benefits that can support the well-being and health of our guests and our communities. 

Join a medicinal mushroom workshop or add a private mushroom inoculation experience to your stay and take home your own log to fruit in your garden for years to come.

Our vision at 42 Acres is to live in harmony with nature, self, and others. In the ornamental gardens team, we connect with this vision by creating beautiful spaces that hold and engage people. Spaces in which people can breathe, self-reflect, and gain a personal connection with nature and each other. 

Our edible ornamental walled garden is both beautiful and productive being planted 100% with edible plants. We offer a spirit of generosity –  welcoming people into the garden and inviting them to smell, taste, and feel what happens when you reconnect with a whole range of edible plants and also discover the impact they have on our own well-being.. 

We nurture a diversity of wildlife, edibility and experience to enrich the health of ourselves and the garden eco-system. There is a chance to learn with us as we discover new ways of eating our gardens.

Add a private ‘Garden Grazing‘ experience in the Edible Ornamental Walled Garden to your stay.

We’re planting miles of edible hedging – creating wildlife corridors between habitats, and offering food and shelter to a huge number of invertebrates, mammals, and birds. These native hedges also sequester carbon,  generating oxygen and growing an array of native berries for both our guests and the resident wildlife. These include rosehips, elder, blackberries, hawthorn, and medlar. As well as some more unusual crops including quince which have the same acidity as lemon and can be used to replace lemon in preserving and making drinks; oak to use the leaves to flavour kombucha and as a replacement for green tea due to its high antioxidant properties and to make acorn flour and acorn coffee; and mountain ash whose zingy vitamin-rich berries can be used to make an amazing hot sauce. Look out for these ingredients on our menus! 

Our regenerative wild tending practice holds a harmony between agriculture and rewilding. This practice is rooted in fostering the health and abundance of natural ecosystems by engaging with them in reciprocal and intentional ways. We consciously harvest, plant, prune, and disperse seeds of native plants to encourage their thriving. These plants provide food and medicine for our menus and for the wildlife on the land. 

Unlike traditional agriculture, wild tending seeks to maintain the balance and integrity of wilderness rather than domesticate it. This approach has been employed by indigenous cultures worldwide for millennia, creating biodiverse landscapes that support both human and more-than-human needs.

By working with natural processes rather than imposing artificial systems, we foster a deep connection to the land and demonstrate regenerative farming methods in response to the big questions of our times.

Add a private ‘Foundations of Foraging’ experience to your stay.

Sea Buckthorn contains Vitamins A, B, C, D, K, P, Omega 3, 6, 7 and 9, and occupies the longest section in the oldest surviving medicinal book. Recent studies have said it’s hard to name a sphere of medicine it cannot help with. This bright berry has 20 times more Vitamin C weight-for-weight than an orange.

We have planted 3000 Sea Buckthorn trees and are growing to make juice. It is a really lovely, local replacement for lemons and oranges in many dishes – both because of the High Vitamin C content and the acidity. It has a unique tropical flavour that is both challenging and delightful and can be likened to a wild version of a Tangfastic when mixed with apple juice!

We steward the land in ways that increase biodiversity, working with and as nature. This regenerative method is recognised as Agriwilding – a harmony between agriculture and rewilding. In 2021 we planted nearly 500 nut trees around our site as part of our agriwilding programme. 

We planted in clusters to align with the wilder landscape aesthetic. And, because squirrels won’t run across open fields! 

We’ve selected native walnut, chestnut and heritage species hazelnut for biodiversity as well as the harvest. We cut around the trees to create green paths through the clusters. These help create mulch, keep down competition and support guests to explore more of the land.

We hope you’ll come back to help share the harvests in the Autumn, starting in 2025 with our first bounty of Heritage Hazelnuts.

Our food is simple, hyper-local and nutrient-dense. Our menus evolve daily as our in-house retreat chefs creatively include each gift the land offers – each in their own time.

We use permaculture principles across our farm and gardens. 100% of our food is either certified organic, or sourced from trusted producers who are pesticide-free and organic in principle, but we don’t feel like we need a stamp to prove it!

We love to put ingredients grown or foraged on our land at centre stage, and we aim to source 80% of produce, year-round from within 42 miles. This 42-Mile vision is rooted in the belief that a local food system is better for people and the planet. Local means less packaging, reduced footprint, fresher, more seasonal produce, and better relationships with our community. We share these practices to foster a deeper understanding of how growing food is deeply connected to the social, economic, and ecological fabric of our communities.

Take a look at our sample vegetarian menu and sample omnivorous menu.

Add a ‘Growing Food With Head, Hands and Heart’ experience on to your stay.

We aim to ensure around 5% of our diet is harvested as nature intended – from the wild. Many different plants and mushrooms from the land find their way into dishes throughout the year’s cycle. They are rich in nutrients and flavour.

We abide by the principle of The Honourable Harvest, a practice that is both ancient and urgent:

• Ask permission of the ones whose lives you seek. Abide by the answer.
• Never take the first. Never take the last.
• Harvest in a way that minimizes harm. 
• Take only what you need and leave some for others.
• Use everything that you take. 
• Take only that which is given to you. 
• Share it, as the Earth has shared with you. 
• Be grateful. 
• Reciprocate the gift.
• Sustain the ones who sustain you, and the Earth will last forever

This practice is grounded in reciprocity and gratitude for nature’s gifts. It supports ourselves and our ecosystems to regenerate and thrive. Foraging helps us to shift from a scarcity to an abundance mindset and forsters a sense of self-sufficiency and reslience in the face of the effects of global industrial agriculture.

Add a ‘‘Foundations of Foraging’ experience to your stay.

We practice whole self-service and invite our guests to do the same. This holistic approach goes beyond the transactional and invites us to embrace personal responsibility for our own well-being as well as caring for each other. As such, our team do not serve – although we are in service. Our intention is for you to feel like a welcome guest in the home of a beloved friend.

Please feel free to make yourself at home – help yourself to tea, coffee, and our wild teas. Meals are served at long tables to inspire conversation and connection, and we also offer space to dine in silence. Food is served family-style. You will be invited to serve yourself and thereby take care of your body’s needs. You will also be asked to clear your own plate and return any mugs, glasses and crockery for washing. 

In a similar way, you are welcome to light cosy fires and to use the items you’ll find around – from musical instruments and books, to SUP boards and wellies. Please return them to where you found them

Our speciality fire cook is an utterly magical experience of food, fire, and forest.

Our intimate woodland dining area is nestled in a clearing under the forest canopy. With open-fire cooking, beautiful hand-carved banquet tables and a treehouse overlooking our lake, this space inspires delight. This is an opportunity to gather and reconnect with the land; the people around us; and the elements It is grounding , healing and joyful.

Your meal will be cooked over an open fire made with wood sustainably grown in this forest, featuring ingredients organically grown and wild-foraged on this land.

As the sun goes down. the forest lights up and we gather around the fire for stories, music, meditation, peace…

Some common foods we eat are actually quite difficult to digest in the gut so we soak and activate all our pulses and nuts to ease digestion.

We also love fermentation and with almost every meal offer some homemade cultured foods to boost our gut flora with pre-biotics and pro-biotics. We never use refined sugar. Instead, we try to use natural sweetness from fruit or veg, or in some cases small quantities of honey, maple syrup or coconut.

We cook everything from scratch, including all our own pickling and preserves, ferments, and cakes.