You can read the original article here: https://theoutdoorguide.co.uk/blogs/tog-blog/foraging-june-2025-elderflowers/

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It gives me great pleasure to be writing this inaugural foraging blog as the newly-appointed Foraging Expert for The Outdoor Guide. What an honour! Not only do I hugely admire TOG for all the great work they do, but one of the main reasons I love foraging for wild food so much is that it gets me outside, it puts me back in touch with nature and I get to explore the vast green spaces we have on our doorsteps - I would like to think that by reading this, you are also a big fan of all of those wonderful things.

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This is the passion that I try to convey to all the guests on my foraging workshops. In fact, it is the entire reason I have chosen this as a career. When my wife announced that we were expecting our first child seven years ago, we were living in London at the time and my job at the time required me to travel the world and work unsociable hours. There is no reality check quite like that second faint red line on a pregnancy test appearing and I knew instantly that things had to change. 

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Ever the supportive partner, I distinctly remember her insisting that I was to be a happy dad, free from the restrictive nature of my previous career and instead I was to look for a job doing something I would love. There was never any doubt in my mind what that was to be. After stumbling into a part-time forager role for a year or so, I decided I needed to operate independently and so in January 2020 (perfect timing!) I set up Forage Box. I am proud to say that Forage Box has evolved into a nationwide entity now, with many workshops being run by our incredible team of tutors across the country.

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I am very lucky to be able to have turned my passionate hobby into a career and lifestyle, but where did it all start? Whilst you might expect that a full-time forager to have maybe been raised in the woods, foraging on a daily basis as part of a hairy hippie community, the reality is that I grew up in semi-detached suburbia. I have always played outdoors (you would have found me building treehouses and camping in the woods instead of locked in my bedroom on a games console) and I love food - foraging is just the obvious intersection on that Venn diagram!

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Whilst my granny is a passionate mushroom forager and my parents can claim to be foodies - we would often pick bilberries or try our best to catch fish on holiday - it was only whilst working on a private estate in the gorgeous Cairngorms that the foraging fire in my belly was truly lit when properly introduced to foraging for wild mushrooms. I can recall the exact moment I was shown actual real-life porcini mushrooms growing right there in a UK forest and how exciting that was (and still is). I spent many summers exploring that estate, eagerly seeking that next bumper haul of chanterelle, porcini, charcoal burners and cauliflower fungus. 

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Fast-forward to now and you’ll still find me staring at the floor rather than the view, constantly scanning for the next exciting thing to pop up from the forest floor or burst from the hedgerow. I have honed my skills to a level with which I can teach now. Whilst my passion for wild food has never waned, it is now my responsibility to teach people how to not just safely forage for themselves, but to ensure they do it legally, sustainably and ethically - topics I plan to explore in future TOG blog posts.

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