In December, it was announced that Tom Frost, from Blaencamel Organic Farm, was taking over Cardiff Salad Garden. We asked Tom to share his plans with us.

I’m from an organic farming background, primarily horticulture which specialised in greenhouse cropping. We sold our produce directly, so I have a lot of experience running veg-box businesses, selling at farmers markets, supplying wholesale and trade and working with chefs. 

I’ve always been excited by horticulture innovation and growing new and interesting varieties of produce. Inevitably that leads to good food!

So that’s what’s shaped our vision for what we’re planning to do with Cardiff Salad Garden.

We will continue to grow and supply mixed salads, but also will diversify into vine crops like tomatoes and cucumbers, and a few other things that will flourish in the greenhouse spaces. We’re excited to start experimenting and to see what we’ll be able to grow, and hopefully get a few new varieties onto menus throughout the city.

We are looking at working with chefs to increase everyone’s knowledge on local food chains, sustainability and seasonality. We hope to learn from them and hopefully there’s lots they can learn from us! Ours is a unique offer, to be able to offer chefs organic salads and vegetables that are being grown in the heart of the city – food miles don’t get much lower than that!

I’m co-running the Salad Garden with Frances Elisabeth, who people may know from Lufkin Coffee. We’ve worked together for the last year on various projects and have a shared history of selling at the Cardiff Farmers Markets. Frances is bringing all her contacts from the Cardiff food scene to help us build a sustainable business and to manage the social enterprise side of what we do.

It’s really important to me that we continue to work with community growing organisations and hopefully be a little venue for people to host workshops, seed sharing events and the like. 

I’d also like to get experts in to give talks and workshops on growing techniques and new innovations. It would be great if the space can continue to grow as a hub for organic and sustainable expertise in the city centre. 

On that note, we are really open to ideas and approaches from people in the Food Cardiff network if there are projects, events or initiatives that we might be able to collaborate with.