Bovey Castle.
Thomas Radford stops beside a patch of greenery that most people would step over without a second thought, reaches down, and holds up a small, heart-shaped leaf. “Enchanter’s nightshade”, he announces, with the tone of someone about to reveal something magnificent. “And you’d think, ‘Oh wow, must be dangerous, sort of magical’, but it actually doesn’t really do anything.” The group laughs. Radford is, it turns out, exactly the sort of guide who makes you look at a hedgerow differently, permanently.
‘The Wild Larder: a Foraging Walk and Lunch’ programme created in partnership with PoB Hotels as part of their ‘Blooming Britain’ initiative, is one of those experiences that sounds lovely on paper and then, in person, turns out to be something considerably more absorbing than that. Radford, an expert forager and wild food advocate who has spent years studying the plants, landscapes and folklore of Britain, leads guests through coastlines, woodland and countryside with a knowledge that feels embedded in his mind since he was born. Schön! alive travelled to the Devon countryside to experience the programme first-hand, following Radford through woodland as he revealed the hidden stories growing in Britain’s landscapes.
Thomas Radford.
June, Radford explains at the outset, is close to the ideal month for this kind of walk. The hedgerows are full, the season is at its most legible and the landscape is doing all the work for you. At Bovey Castle in Devon – recently named Best Large Hotel in England at the VisitEngland Awards for Excellence 2026 – where the series launched on 5th June, the route winds through woodland and along a river before arriving at a wildflower meadow that Radford had scouted the day before. “Last time I got up there, it was just earth,” he says. “I went in there yesterday, and it’s this sea of blue and gold. They’ve got poppies in there, cornflowers, and it’s on a lovely side of the hill with a sculpture, a view across the valley.” He had been genuinely moved by it – that much is clear.
What makes Radford an unusually good guide is that he never treats the plants as botanical data. Every species comes with a story, a use, a piece of history that makes the landscape feel inhabited by something other than trees. The enchanter’s nightshade, for instance, belongs to Circe: not the ‘Game of Thrones’ character, he clarifies, but the sorceress from the Odyssey, who turned Ulysses’ men into pigs. Nobody knows whether the plant actually does that. “Maybe it turns you into a pig if you eat enough of it,” he offers cheerfully, before moving on – Circe was a demi god after all, so some magic had to be involved anyway.
Bovey Castle.
Radford is fully prepared for a zombie invasion and, during our guide, doesn’t waste time teaching the best way to make use of these plants. For instance, he describes ivy’s saponins, the same compounds found in soap, as a perfectly effective laundry detergent made by boiling the leaves into a tea, leaving it overnight, then straining it straight into your washing machine. Somewhere else, he points out ribwort plantain, a common weed with antihistamine properties, historically used to treat bee stings, or herb Robert, a small pink-flowered plant currently being researched for anti-cancer properties.
Many plants have some really fun facts about them: dandelion leaves are perfect for salads, while laurels contain uncultivated cyanide that can cause fainting or possibly – you guessed it – death. Speaking of which, Radford points out to two particular species: monkshood, the most poisonous plant in Britain, and hemlock, the most dangerous, both with a matter-of-factness that makes you glad he is there.
However, the plant he seems most personally “attached” to is mugwort. A relative of wormwood, the herb that gives absinthe its character, mugwort has been used for centuries as a medicinal plant, a brewing ingredient and, according to Radford, a dream enhancer. It contains a compound reputed to produce lucid dreams, and he has, as he confirms, experimented with this: “My dreams are so bonkers anyway that I wouldn’t know the difference.” Pregnant women, he adds with a slight change of register, should avoid it entirely.
Bovey Castle.
Bovey Castle.
What connects all of it, across every plant and story and piece of folklore, is a philosophy Radford returns to repeatedly. “Two, three hundred years ago, you had to know this stuff or you would die,” he says. “You couldn’t pop down the chemist.” The plants around the edges of fields, often overlooked as weeds, were placed there because the food in the field went to the landowner and in winter there was nothing left. People propagated them deliberately, as survival. “When you start to read nature in that way, you just have respect for them. And when you go out in the woods, you don’t feel quite so intimidated by this green shit.” The last two words land with a warmth that makes the observation, somehow, feel like a gift.
At Thurlestone Hotel on 23rd June, the walk follows the Devon coast, with the Atlantic visible between the headlands as Radford guides guests through the coastal hedgerows, the flavours changing with the salt air and the terrain. The experience concludes with a three-course lunch built around the morning’s discoveries, which is the part of the day that makes everything academic become, rather suddenly, personal. At Calcot & Spa, where the walk takes place across 220 acres of rewilded Cotswolds grounds on 30th June, the landscape shifts again: hedgerow herbs, wildflowers, edible leaves and foraged fruits moving from hand to kitchen to plate, the distance between field and fork reduced to almost nothing. Calcot extends the spirit of ‘Blooming Britain’ into the rest of the day and, for those who want it, the rest of the afternoon.
Bovey Castle.
The broader ‘Blooming Britain’ programme, which runs across the PoB Hotels collection until late summer, extends the same logic through different landscapes and disciplines. The horticultural thread continues at Gravetye Manor, where head florist Sharon Coote translates the estate’s historic grounds into custom flower workshops, mirrored further north at Cromlix through bespoke floral embroidery and watercolour masterclasses. The Hebridean Princess anchors the botanical narrative offshore by charting curated garden tours across Argyll and Antrim, while Fingal in Edinburgh anchors it to the urban waterfront, connecting guests directly to the wild meadows lining the Water of Leith. At The Royal Crescent in Bath, ‘Bridgerton’ fans will recognise the Georgian façade from the first moment they see it. In Scotland, Glenapp Castle sits near ‘Outlander’ filming locations, and the concierge can arrange bespoke tartan and cashmere for those hoping to leave slightly better dressed than when they arrived.
“With Blooming Britain, we wanted to celebrate all those wonderfully British seasonal rituals through the individuality of our hotels,” says Kalindi Juneja, Chief Executive of PoB Hotels. “Foraging in the countryside, discovering a new designer, wandering through flower-filled gardens, stretching out a long lunch a little further than planned: this is Britain at its most joyful, expressive and beautifully unhurried.”
Back in the woods, Radford pauses beside a patch of ivy climbing a leaning oak and says something that stays with you. When you understand what is around you, when you can read the landscape and feel what it has fed and healed and hidden across centuries, you feel connected, he says, “connected to your ancestors”. And standing there in the British countryside in June, surrounded by plants that turned men into pigs and cured bee stings and gave people lucid dreams, it is surprisingly easy to believe him.
Bovey Castle.
The Wild Larder experience at Thurlestone Hotel takes place on 23rd June. Calcot & Spa hosts its session on 30th June. Further dates at Gilpin Hotel & Lake House will follow later in the season.
Discover more here.
photography. courtesy of PoB Hotels
words. Gennaro Costanzo
In the heart of East London, the 
