Belvoir Farm elderflower fields feature in new Channel 5 documentary The Secret Life of Trees
Belvoir Farm’s famous elderflower fields are to be featured in a new Channel 5 documentary The Secret Life of Trees.
Narrated by Michael Palin, this fascinating series follows the incredible lives of trees – from their beginning as tiny seeds through to magnificent giants and into old age, revealing the secrets of how they communicate, how they drink and even how some of the three trillion trees on our planet are as old as the pyramids.
Bottesford-based Belvoir Farm features in the first episode, airing this Friday, 25 July, at 9pm (watch the trailer here). The episode focuses on the important role hedgerows play in the UK’s natural environment — including how elderflower, one of Belvoir Farm’s key cordial ingredients, is pollinated by a surprising insect.
Instead of bees, it’s tiny bugs called thrips that pollinate elderflowers. Ecologist Connor Butler visited Belvoir Farm’s 60-acre organic plantation to explain how these little insects help the flowers grow by feeding on their pollen.
“While many of us squirm at the thought of insects, they play an essential role in all of our lives, with around a third of the food and drink we consume requiring insects as part of its production” explains Connor. “Elderflowers have an unusual approach compared to most other plants, relying mostly on thrips - tiny insects no bigger than a full stop. It was a great joy to spend a day filming at Belvoir Farm, especially as someone who loves insects. I was pleasantly surprised by how much nature I saw on the farm, from solitary bees to longhorn beetles and butterflies.”
Michael Palin is heard talking about the visit to Belvoir Farm - “For many trees, the creation of new life starts with one of the most dramatic displays in the natural world: blossom, and there was certainly plenty of blossom on view at that time. And to learn how seeds are made and how the elderflower blossom is crucial to a tree ‘having sex’. And once a seed is formed, it uses ingenious ways, like the spiralling sycamore helicopter seed, to travel far from the parent tree. And then from the bare soil a brand-new tree will begin to grow.”
The programme was filmed during Belvoir Farm’s annual elderflower harvest in June. Company MD Pev Manners gave the film crew a tour of the fields and explained how the business relies on local people to help with the harvest. They also filmed some pickers from the community who were gathering flowers at the time.
“Each year we ask members of the community to help us pick the elderflowers by hand,” says Pev. “It’s a short window when the flowers are at their best and getting them picked and processed quickly is key to making our cordial taste as fresh as it does.”
Belvoir Farm pays local pickers by the kilo and many families and individuals from the area take part each year. The elderflowers are collected, weighed, and turned into Belvoir’s well-known Elderflower Cordial — one of the company’s most popular drinks.
“We’re the only drinks company I know of that still makes elderflower drinks the proper way - using real, freshly picked flowers, not artificial flavourings,” he continues. “It’s a once-a-year harvest that lasts just a few weeks and during peak season we see up to 2–3 tonnes of elderflowers coming through the doors every day, all hand-picked by the local community.
“The whole team is completely obsessed with getting it right. That attention to detail is why we produce over 8 million elderflower drinks a year, and why our 750ml Elderflower Presse is the UK’s top-selling premium adult soft drink. We wait all year for the flowers to bloom — and then we bottle the moment.”