Potager’s sustainable future with owner Mark Harris…
As you walk the grounds of Potager from the lower level car park, weaving through the trees of the enchanted gardens and allotments heading towards the sanctuary of the warming greenhouse, a sense of calm rushes over you, like that feeling of returning home after a long trip away, you leave your baggage at the door, grab a coffee and just relax. This isn’t by chance, this comes back to the hard work of all the volunteers and full time staff which makes Potager as a community tick! That’s just it really, the word community encapsulates everything Potager is about now, and what it wants to develop more of well into the future.
On a quiet November Monday we visited Potager to tour the site and had the opportunity to chat to the man that makes it all tick, owner Mark Harris. For those of you that haven’t yet had the pleasure to meet Mark, initially he would come across quite unassuming and quiet but once you uncover his layers you find a driven individual, always looking to progress positive projects never just for himself, but with other people’s best interests always at the core.
Marks story started having studied chemistry at the university of Leeds but towards the end of his uni journey he found himself completing modules in business and management in a way to avoid the 18 hour laboratory modules he had lost interest in, at this point he felt a career in academia may not quite be for him. Following uni Mark got involved in environmental activism and direct action, something that may have been the birthstone for many values he carries with him to the present day. From there Mark quickly jumped between locations from helping on a homelessness self build project in Leeds and finding he quite enjoyed it, to then finding his way to North Carolina to do some timber framing work.
After a spell across the pond and through a rather circuitous route he ended up on the Ffestiniog railway in north Wales, starting an apprenticeship in timber framed railway carriage building which he then continued do on and off for five years. He learned a lot about joinery and woodwork during this time which would again come to great aid down the line during his Potager tenure.
During a holiday in Porthleven, Cornwall with his then girlfriend, he had a chance encounter with a man called John Lambourne, an experienced harbour master who was rebuilding his St.Ives lugger “The Ripple” in Newlyn at the time. Taking a chance, Mark asked if he could volunteer for a week and so the next phase of his career was born. From here Mark embarked on a boatbuilding course at Falmouth marine school to gain extra vital skills to go further in this trade. This is where Potager and Mark first met, when one of his then tutors of boat design Rory mentioned that he happened to have a workshop at this place called Potager garden, he was very helpful in suggesting that he would actually reduce the amount of workshop space he had to make room for Mark, if it was acceptable to the then owners of Potager, Dan and Peter. He would create the space for Mark to build a 20 ft replica of a Mevagissey Tosher, a boat he went on to successfully build and launched in 2007. During the early stages of the build Mark had been offered the opportunity to go back to his previous role in north Wales on the railway and the guarantee of steady employment. This left him with a decision to make, go back to what he had come to know or embark on this new life at Potager, sink his teeth into and new challenge but with no guarantee of how it would go or if he would be able to make a liveable income out of it. If you hadn’t already worked out, Mark stayed, embarked on making Potager home and worked alongside Dan and Peter in taking the Gardens and workshops from what they were originally all the way to what you find today. This journey has of course been a long one, almost starting the project completely from scratch: once sitting down together and realising that they were realistically going to have to rebuild most of the buildings and re-landscape the gardens from square one.
From that day forward Potager has been a steadily growing project, starting by repurposing one of the greenhouses into studio space to bring in a small amount of income and get more people involved in the project, to then rebuilding the cafe from the previous 1970’s Propagation greenhouse where you couldn’t stand up at the edges and when the wind blew the glass fell in, to what you find today, a modern light filled space where you can pin back the doors in the summer and create a flow state of customers and staff spilling through the cafe and onto the lawn and patios, then transition into winter as you cosy up around the log burner with a hot drink and a warming delight from the brunch menu as the raindrops dance on the glass above you.
Chatting to friends over many years, Mark knew he always wanted to be involved in a land based project. He may have come across this opportunity completely by chance but then he realised he was now involved in exactly that. From then on the team set about clearing areas of the overgrown site, clearing bracken and brambles revealing an orchard, continuing the renovation of the derelict nursery and continued to pursue avenues to achieve financial sustainability.
Since the reopening of the new build cafe trade steadily grew, new parking was installed increasing the capacity of the site with the aim to be able to reach that sweet spot of business sustainability. This meant Potager was able to start paying employees and be able to provide a living from their work, whilst also keeping the offer of Potager as a space for the community.
One of the ways this was achieved was by choosing to only open 4 days a week (Thursday - Sunday) leaving Monday to Wednesday for community days, classes and groups.
I asked Mark how he would describe Potager in a sentence, he paused and struggled to come up with the right words, I intervened and stated that perhaps that is a positive. When a project is ever growing and evolving, an identity can be hard to describe and can continually shift meaning you never quite know where you’re going to land, as long as you never stray too far from the core values, and that forward thinking path, then you should always be on the right track.
My next question for Mark was for him to talk me through the food offering at Potager and the story of the ‘garden to plate’ ethos they champion on site. An entirely vegetarian and vegan offering is what greets you as you arrive at your table in the cafe. Dishes ranging from head chef Flo’s takes on your brunch classics right through to dishes inspired from all around the world, exciting in name, aesthetic and taste. Flo’s food offering comes from a background of working in kitchen environments across the globe and honing what she has learnt to really make any ingredient that passes through her Potager kitchen sing. Whether you’re vegetarian, vegan or carnivore you will always find something exciting on the ever changing seasonal menu to go home and tell all your friends about, that’s if you haven’t already posted it to your social media stories. If you haven’t yet visited for lunch, what are you waiting for?
In summary Potager means Community, Potager means family and a sustainable future. It oozes passion for the way they think people should see the world, how we should care for our environment, produce organic ingredients for our tables with the ‘garden to plate’ vision, and how we can bring communities together to share those beliefs. Potager doesn’t force these views upon you but rather shows you the possibilities for change and lets individuals imaginations run free, adapting what they learn within the surroundings in their own personal journeys.
Mark shared a story to finish, it was a story I’d heard before in my time knowing him and has always resonated with me in which he said “sometimes we are just setting the stage and then good things happen, you meet a couple that get married here and have a lovely time and then a couple of years later you spot them sitting on the lawn and their first child has just taken their first steps at Potager, and it just sends a little bit of a shiver down your spine, you take a step back and realise you’re creating a space where memories are made, where people return year after year and they bring their family and they bring their friends. I think the best compliment I ever heard was someone say oh I love coming to Potager it’s like visiting an old family friend, that’s the moment I realised we are not just a commercial environment but there’s a lot more magic going on.” The perfect way to sum up Potager don’t you think?
