In Sandsend they’re digging deep to create a fork-to-plate ethos at the UK’s first hotel forest garden hotel
In the everyday life of a hotel there are beds to make, breakfasts to serve, cocktails to shake and customers to cocoon.
At Raithwaite, Sandsend add to the mix saplings to plant, vegetables to sow and water to bottle.
These everyday tasks combine in a new green approach with the aim to sustainably feed the hotel’s kitchen year-round.
They have joined forces with Sapling Spirits, who plant a tree for each bottle of their vodka sold, in a shared passion for sustainability – to bring to life the new permaculture project, which is the first of its kind in the UK.
The Forest Garden is an agronomic system, designed to mimic a natural forest, using a layering of tall trees to form the canopy and sub-canopy, right down to bushes, shrubs, and herbs on the ground level – together forming a stable and sustainable ecosystem.
The combination of hardy plants require minimal human interference, are biologically sustainable and suited to the UK climate – and yield a variety of produce across all seasons. A second planting in the Spring will see a further 500 trees planted to complete Raithwaite’s Forest Garden – ahead of the first harvest as soon as next year.
The plan is the passion of Raithwaite Sandsend’s food, drink and sustainability director – Ollie Hunter: who joined the team to oversee the new food direction of the hotel - having spent a decade jumping around the food and drink world.
Ollie started an organic wine importer, cooked street food in Brixton, contested as a MasterChef Semi-finalist, worked on organic farms, travelled a lot, eating and drinking as he went.
He also now runs The Wheatsheaf in Chilton Foliat with his wife, which was voted the most ‘sustainable business’ in 2019 by the Sustainable Restaurant Association.
He truly believes sustainability is the way forward for everything whether it is food, economics, energy, education, or simply making a loaf of bread.
‘By introducing the UK’s first hotel Forest Garden we’ll be able to provide our kitchen and bar with delicious, fresh, perennial fruits, herbs and spices to be used in our menus and cocktails. It’s a hugely exciting step in our own sustainability story, which complements our guest experience and opens conversation around sustainability, to educate about how we can all play our part to make a real difference.’ he says.
‘While this partnership is the first of its kind, hopefully we can use it as a blueprint to plant forest gardens and work on other permaculture projects with our customers all over the country. The idea is to use our tree planting to encourage sustainable, hyper localised food production;, adds Ed Faulkner, whose company Sapling Spirits, only sources wheat from regenerative farms in the UK.
The hotel team is also set to develop new gardens in the hotel’s grounds to include 16 organic no-dig beds, a compost site and two polytunnels – to grow fresh, organic fruit and vegetables such as Jerusalem artichokes, broad beans, carrots, leads, wild herbs, Asian salads, strawberries, gooseberries, and rhubarb, amongst others - and are striving to achieve zero waste status by 2023.
Raithwaite Sandsend was recently named the UK’s most sustainable hotel at the annual industry awards, The Cateys.
