Sitting in my wilderness-like walled garden gave me dreams for the future, its silence and great age inspiring ideas and answers after city life.

sing organic gardening methods we dug, raked, planted, propagated, cleared, cleaned and planned, but chasing close behind me was the need to earn a living – and to earn it by making herbal teas. Planting rows of catnip, lemon balm, borage, fennel, rosemary, and more, it soon looked like the early days of strip farming – except for the emerging knot garden in the centre.

Countless experiments with tea blends were carried out, day and night, in the tiny kitchen of my home.

As still a student of herbal medicine, my efforts in that tiny kitchen taught me much instinctive knowledge of plants and showed me that the simplest way to understand herbs is to grow, eat and drink them. This basic approach has stayed with me and my enthusiasm for it has, and always will, remain.

My biggest battle was to sell my blends of herbal teas, hand-packed in simple cellophane bags. No one had ever sold blends of herbal teas before. Combinations of herbs with essential oils added (to replace those lost in drying) were not what the public were used to and, although the price was right, the public, or at least the shop-owners, were on the whole rather frosty.

Single herb teas were normally sold and drunk, so why the need for change?

With new ideas and the prospect of a challenge, the garden resumed a new lease of life just in time.

The old potting sheds were converted from packing rooms into a busy, bustling shop and offices, teas were sold over the counter and our battle against the prejudices of other shops had begun. ‘We’ll sell our own if they won’t sell them for us’ was the attitude. The year was 1978.

Setting up shop in the middle of a garden in the middle of a wood, miles from the nearest town, was not a recipe for success.

However, patience and hard work were slowly and gradually paying dividends. Soon, news of our blended teas reached the ears of those in London and a small step had been achieved.

The whole concept was developed by a continual education process as we talked to the public and the public, in turn, talked to us. Much of our time was originally spent just turning people away from the idea that herbs were cranky and educating them to understand that not only could they be beneficial but pleasant tasting. These were the people not au-fait with the whole-food, health-food scene, but those used to shopping at local supermarkets, having normal family demands and with habits for drinking only tea and coffee. All people from all walks of life were candidates for our continual tea-tasting sessions and every comment was valued.