31 July 2025
A group of Welsh growers who share an affinity for herbs and their multiple uses are instigating new business ideas and building on existing revenue streams thanks to a progressive Farming Connect initiative.
With aspirations ranging from achieving better prices for existing crops and generating further income from diversifying into growing new ones, to exploring routes to market for herbs with medicinal, culinary and other uses, the growers are moving forward with some of their ideas with support from Agrisgôp.
This fully-funded management development programme encourages eligible farmers to get together to not only develop their businesses but to personally gain confidence and skills through action learning.
Some of the growers in the group formed by Agrisgôp leader Jacqui Banks in west Wales are experienced herb producers while others are new entrants to horticulture or want to add herbs to their existing enterprises.
They include Salena Walker who farms four hectares in Carmarthenshire, at Ysbryd y Coed, Hebron, and who uses most of the herbs she grows within her Wild Welsh Herbalism business.
Salena runs courses where participants learn how to grow or forage for Welsh herbs and how to use these for medicinal and culinary purposes.
As a nutritionist, naturopath and herbalist with 20 years’ experience, teaching and education is her priority.
She joined the Agrisgôp group to connect with other growers because having a ready and diverse supply of herbs for her clients to source is key to her work as a herbalist.
Agrisgôp also offered a chance to talk through her business ideas with others, to network and to build up her contacts.
Salena says “every single session’’ helped her, including the many speaker-led meetings and visits to herb growers.
“The visits were inspirational, I really benefitted from seeing what they were doing. It made me realise what is possible.’’
But she says she gained the most from the dedicated group sessions. “Jacqui led the group in a way that helped us to analyse our businesses,’’ she reflects.
With it came the realisation for Salena that she was “spinning too many plates’’ in her business. Agrisgôp enabled her to work out where she needed to focus her time and that was on the education side of her enterprise.
“I was very aware that I was moving to a position of burnout, that trying to do everything was going to become unsustainable,’’ she acknowledges.
“I will still grow herbs but have moved in the direction of education with in-person and online courses and fewer one-to-one consultations which will be a better use of my time.
Without exploring that in the group I don’t know if I would quite have got there yet.’’
Other group members have also made changes to their businesses. One couple bought land to develop a market garden incorporating herbs, and another grower created a community garden and a campsite on her farm, using her herb garden and education around herbs to attract visitors.
The head grower at a care farm is now growing a pure stand of calendula and lemon balm as cash crops as an add-on to existing culinary herb sales.
For group member Bob Weatherhead, membership of the group has generated a new income stream from growing meadowsweet, which he has established as the understorey to his nut tree agroforestry system on 13ha near Boncath.
This was a direct result of connecting with one of the speakers, a mid-Wales-based medicinal herb processor.
Bob will sell the meadowsweet to his business when it is ready to harvest.
It was also useful for him to learn from another speaker that meadowsweet can be grown from the creeping rhizome, not just seed.
Involvement in Agrisgôp gave Bob the confidence to grow and market the herb, allowing him to make fuller use of his land.
“It was a very diverse group and that was really important, to have growers and end users,’’ he reckons.
The group hopes to continue meeting once a year going forward, as a Farming Connect Horticulture Network.