Meet the Harewood volunteer creating mushrooms out of fallen trees

The sunken glade occurred as a result of the damming of the beck to create the lake by landscape gardener, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, and it is around the pathways of Linda’s favourite place we stroll.

Passing by plants and flora, nurtured from the original plants and seeds of many Asiatic species collected by early 20th century hunters, we arrive at the cascade.

Linda explains the dramatic waterfall follows the flow to the River Wharfe before demonstrating the bamboo fence she has creatively constructed re-using bamboo from the grounds for use as temporary barrier.

Turning a corner the Harewood Stupa, the Buddhist monument built in 2004, comes into view evoking an immediate sense of calm and peace away from the busyness of the world.

Chatting as we stroll around Linda’s environmental ‘office’ the vistas and landscapes of the Himalayas, Nepal and Ladakh are among the memorable reminiscences of the travels she and her partner embarked on a decade ago when they took the opportunity to spend two and half years sightseeing around the world.

“We have taken three career breaks. We have been to the Himalayas and it is a special area for us. We have been to Nepal, Ladakh, so I have been around these areas and I don’t think you can appreciate how beautiful the vistas are until you go. Who wouldn’t want to see the world? Different cultures, experiences. Also different landscapes, exotic landscapes, alpine landscapes. Patagonia was fascinating and the colder countries – I am drawn to wild things, vast areas of nature.” Embraced by the encapsulating landscape of Harewood, Linda is evidently in her element. Her introduction to this vast estate, nestled between Harrogate and Leeds, came through volunteering for different organisations following her travels. One such role was with Leeds City Council Countryside Rangers where Linda learned about meadow and woodland management. She brought her experience and knowledge to Harewood five years ago when she joined the volunteers of the Harewood House Trust. The charitable and educational trust was established to maintain and develop Harewood House - the stately home of the Lascelles family - its collections and grounds for public benefit.

“I had learned about meadow and woodland management; pathway improvements; dead hedging; hedge laying and scything for meadow maintenance. It is traditional and I like traditional methods of working with the land. The skills I learned I am consolidating in my role here,” explains Linda, who credits her manager, Jim Hatfield, and head gardener, Trevor Nicholson, with helping to develop her knowledge since she became a permanent member of staff with the Harewood House Trust gardening team.

Appreciating the all-embracing environment and all that lives and breathes within it, has also re-connected Linda to the creativity which has been part of her life since school.

“When I left school I went to art college. It has always been a thread through my life – I worked in the caring profession and I used creativity in that,” she says. Her foray into her wood-turned fungi, created from wood foraged within the natural environment in which she works, came after she learned how to use a lathe with the support of wood turner, Bob Miles, from Wharfedale Men’s Shed.

“There is a rhythm to it – it’s a bit like Tai Chi,” says Linda, referring to the gentle swaying involved in the wood turning process. “The exciting bit is when you are cutting into the wood and the shape starts to reveal itself. I may have an idea of what it will be like, but as I am working with the wood it changes because I think the wood feels as though it wants to go like that.”

Linda works out of an upstairs art studio, and a downstairs creative space shared by her fellow members of the Otley Maker Space in Otley Courthouse. Access to the shared lathe enables Linda to transform the Spalted beech from the Harewood Estate into her beautiful mushrooms. Her fascination with fungi and the ease of creating mushrooms as a wood-turning novice led to them becoming a focus for her work.

“The wood I am using is from a beech that was reduced in size several years ago. The interesting thing about it is spalted means it has got a type of fungi that grows into the tree and grows up through the cells, and that is what creates the pattern in the wood. You get these lovely black lines and they are a beautiful pattern, but you don’t know how it will turn out because you are revealing the wood. There is an element of unpredictability and I quite like that because it’s not about controlling the environment, for me it’s about working with it. Working with wood it is revealing the beauty that is there,” explains Linda.

Connecting with nature through creativity is something she is keen to share with around 230,000 visitors who visit Harewood every year. “I like simplistic, minimalistic and I like things that are tactile. I want people to touch the wood, they are in touch with nature.” Within the Woodland Area, home to the Sylvascope sustainable treehouse designed and built by Sebastian Cox, Linda is helping to create an educational space for Harewood’s young explorers.

In this natural Woodland Wonderland filled with willow structures artistically weaved by Leilah Vyner from Dragon Willow, among them a pair of hares in sparring stance, Linda used the chainsaw skills she learned on a course to carve an old tree stump into a mushroom around which she has re-located the wood-turned rustic mushrooms she originally created for the Folklore and Fairytales Trail around the estate’s lakeside in Autumn 2023. A keen supporter of the arts and crafts within its busy programme of annual events, Harewood is a natural space to encourage creativity.

“I wanted to do something in the woodland which was to put the mushrooms as a mini installation and put them underground so they become part of the environment,” says Linda. “The outdoor mushrooms are completely natural. I don’t do anything with them, I turn them and they go in the environment, they go back into nature to decompose and decay. The natural decay draws attention to dead wood in the woodland and also draws attention to mushrooms and fungi and how important they are in the environment. They form a symbiotic relationship with trees. They have roots underground and most of the fungi are an underground mycelium network.”

It was encouragement from Harewood Estate gardener, Fi Mason, and Harewood Estate hospitality manager, Felicity Marsden, that led to Linda creating a collection of indoor mushrooms. Unlike the untreated, natural outdoor mushrooms Linda re-introduces to the earth, the indoor mushrooms are polished and waxed. “It brings out the grain of the wood in a beautiful way,” she says.

Linda’s mushrooms, along with Fi’s range of natural wreaths and floristry creations, are among the gifts and locally sourced food and drink available to buy from the Harewood Estate Farm Shop.