Jurassic Coast Mushrooms, which already supplies top local restaurants including The Pig on the Beach hotel and the Shell Bay restaurant at Studland in Dorset, is looking to branch out – and may be coming to Swanage Market soon.
Fungus experts, known as mycologists, Andy Knott and Sam Durant are on a mission to cultivate rare native mushrooms, not only for local hospitality businesses but also to reintroduce rare species of fungi into the wild.
Andy Knott with some of the Jurassic Coast Mushrooms currently fruiting in the farm’s fungi tent
Creating trees which will grow truffles
Andy and Sam set up a micro mushroom farm called Duck Farm at Tincleton in Dorset in May 2025, cultivating lion’s mane and oyster mushrooms, along with lots of different reishi, enoki and other fungi.
As well as selling speciality mushrooms to restaurants in Studland, they are also supplying other fine dining establishments like Thirteen in Poole and Yalbury Cottage near Dorchester.
Andy and Sam are regular visiting experts at Carey’s Secret Garden near Wareham, and are preparing to hold a second All Things Fungi festival there following the huge success they had with the inaugural event in 2024.
But their plans to make mushrooms magical again don’t stop there – they are working on creating trees which will grow truffles, on cloning some of Britain’s rarest fungi and reintroducing them to woodlands in Purbeck, and even turning them into art gallery exhibits.
A selection of the rare and very tasty mushrooms being grown for Purbeck restaurants
“Early stage garden centre for mushrooms”
Andy Knott, who’s also known as the Mushy Mentor, said:
“It’s early days for us, we have lots of hooks in the water and we are waiting to see what bites. It’s a little bit like an early stage garden centre, but for mushrooms.
“It’s definitely catching on, there are lots of people who want to grow mushrooms, whether it’s on logs in their gardens or in pots on their windowsills, and we are the go to place for that to happen.
“We fruit a wide variety of gourmet mushrooms and species that people have never heard of or seen before, and sell them direct to customers from our unit here, or deliver them to local restaurants – we were at Swanage Christmas market last year and had huge interest in what we were doing.
“If the demand is there we would definitely entertain a Friday market at Swanage – our Fridays are currently available and the Christmas market at Swanage was one of the best we did in 2024. People tell us that Swanage Market is the perfect place for us, as there isn’t anybody doing mushrooms there.
“We grow lion’s mane, several different species of oyster, lots of different reishi, enoki, and dryad saddle, all UK mushrooms which you wouldn’t see in Tescos, although you may occasionally find them in an Asian supermarket.”
Jurassic Coast Mushrooms already has a stall at Dorchester Market and is considering coming along to Swanage Market on a Friday if there’s a demand
“Clarkson’s Farm has been good for us”
A recent episode of TV programme Clarkson’s Farm saw Jeremy Clarkson experiment with growing mushrooms.
Andy added:
“Clarkson’s Farm has been really good for us, because it put out the idea of growing mushrooms to the mainstream audience, people who really had no idea that there was anything beyond the button mushroom at the supermarket but who now come here asking about the species we grow.
“So many people now have different diets – vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian and so on – and mushrooms are such a good alternative not only to meat but also to fake meat.
“People who have given up meat are now eating ultra highly processed vegetarian sausages and burgers which are probably worse for us than real meat is, whereas mushrooms are just completely natural with no chemicals at all in them.
“They are very tasty, low in calories, a good source of antioxidants, have so many medicinal properties and there’s a huge choice as well, but we are aware we also have to raise awareness, as the British tend to be much more wary of mushrooms than other Europeans.”
Here’s some we made earlier … the recent heatwave had mushrooms growing almost as fast as they could be harvested
Is this reishi an art installation or dinner? Or possibly both?
Mistaking fungus for art
Part of that awareness drive will be a three-day fungi festival at Carey’s Secret Garden from Friday 25th October 2025 with truffle dog demonstrations, fabric dyeing with mushrooms, cooking workshops, growing lessons, pottery classes, bushcraft, vendors and speakers, as well as fungi foraging in the forest.
Before that, they have plans to work with Sculpture By The Lakes near Moreton, leading fungi walks and putting some of their reishi on display in the art gallery – as several visitors to Duck Farm mistook the fungus for a piece of art and thought that it should be on show.
Andy and Sam will also exhibit at the Bournemouth Rare Plant Fair in Hamworthy on Saturday 12th July 2025, to see whether people who are cloning and altering plants like orchids might be interested in using their fungi laboratory for their work.
And monthly mushroom growing workshops are being planned for Duck Farm, as well as a six to eight week course to take people from the very basics of mushroom identification to being confident in their cultivation and cloning.
The plan would be to lacquer fungi like this ganoderma and put them on display in an art gallery
“Status symbols are now invasive species”
Sam Durant said:
“We are trying to push the vision for home growers – there’s no reason in this day and age to import cultures from abroad because there are so many varieties in the UK.
“This year, we have already seen some yellow oyster mushrooms fruiting in the wild, but they are not native to the UK, they come from America. Obviously they will acclimatise and settle over here, but what we don’t know is what that will mean for our native species.
“All the plants that were introduced by wealthy landowners a century ago because they were status symbols are now invasive species, like Japanese knotweed and rhododendrons, and are the bane of our countryside.
“What we grow are species native to the UK that we have cloned from wild specimens which we have found or that have been sent to our lab, while many mushroom growers are growing commercial strains of fungi which often originate from China or the USA.”
Five strains of lion’s mane mushroom are being grown from various sources in the south – Purbeck’s is top right and doing well!
Never found in the wild before
Sam added:
“If we find a rare UK species, we can clone it, grow it, preserve its genetics and reintroduce it to the wild – only this week we were sent a rare mushroom, the only one we know of in the country, which the Japanese call zhuling and which we have cloned.
“It’s extremely rare, a very tasty mushroom, a delicacy to eat, and it is also incredibly medicinal. No one in the UK has an opportunity to grow it because we have never before been able to find it in the wild and clone it, until now.
“We are doing a lot of our native fungi cloning from the wild, we have five strains of wild lion’s mane here from all over the south, one from Dorset.
“Chefs want to buy lion’s mane because of its taste, but there are lots of people out there who will powder it and take it as a medicinal supplement – but we can satisfy both camps, by finding out which species taste best and which have the most medicinal compounds inside.”
Sam Durant in the sterile cloning lab, where truffle culture is being made with which to inoculate saplings
“Possibilities here are endless”
Andy Knott added:
“The possibilities here are endless. We are playing around with some truffle cultures which are native to Dorset, and we hope to make a mixture which we could use to inoculate sterile saplings.
“Then we can offer small trees to people – perhaps hazel, oak, or ash – where the roots would be growing in a medium full of truffle mycelium, encouraging growth.
“In 10 to 15 years you could be harvesting truffles – these trees could increase the value of your property, with truffles at £700 a kilo, and you could even get a further income stream by coppicing hazel, or harvesting the nuts!
“It would be nicely ironic, in a world where invasive species like Japanese knotweed can decrease the value of your house, if native species like Dorset truffles could make your home more valuable!”
Watch out for the Jurassic Coast Mushrooms van on its travels around Purbeck
Another delivery of mushrooms for the Shell Bay restaurant at Studland
Further information
- More about Jurassic Coast Mushrooms on its Facebook page
