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On Your Farm: Last of the Formby Asparagus

Last of the Formby Asparagus

21/05/2017

BBC Radio 4 - On Your Farm, Last of the Formby Asparagus

Formby asparagus was once a famous delicacy. Caz Graham meets the last of the growers.

Formby asparagus was once a famous delicacy. Caz Graham meets the last of the traditional growers.

Formby Asparagus was once a famous delicacy, served on the Cunard liners between Liverpool and New York but grown in fields reclaimed from sand dunes to take the 'night-soil' of Liverpool. The sewerage is long gone but the asparagus remains - just. Today the dunes are managed by the National Trust and there's just a single asparagus grower left, David Brooks who's the fifth generation of his family to grow and sell asparagus spears. Caz Graham joins him for the harvest and hears from the National Trust's Andrew Brockbank about how and why this specialist crop took root on the Lancashire coast.

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