That was the thinking behind a day that brought together Blue Sky Botanics customers, suppliers and some brilliant minds from across food, beverage and cosmetics industries to explore botanicals from every angle, from source, flavour and biodiversity to science, extraction and future innovation.

The Summit also gave us the perfect opportunity to celebrate 21 years of Blue Sky Botanics, alongside many of the customers, suppliers and people who have been part of our journey.

Held at the historic Hellens Manor in Ledbury and created in partnership with our fantastic suppliers Organic Herb Trading and Fair Wild, the Summit opened with a welcome from our Managing Director Caroline Brevitt, before Tea Promoters India (TPI) transported us to the very source of our tea supply chain, through an immersive film capturing the landscapes, people and processes behind its harvest in India.

Our supplier partners PDS Organic Spices and Fedecovera also brought us closer to source, sharing the story behind their organic spices and bringing some gloriously aromatic coffee along with them!

From there, we started asking some big questions.

Dan Saladino, award-winning food journalist, author of Eating to Extinction and presenter of BBC Radio 4's The Food Programme, brought the extraordinary loss of diversity in our food system vividly to life.

Did you know that in Victorian Britain, you could eat a different variety of apple every day for more than four years without eating the same one twice. Today, we typically have around four or five to choose from…

Dan's talk explored what we're losing as our food system becomes increasingly narrow and why protecting diversity matters for flavour, culture and the resilience of our future food system.

Niki Segnit, author of both The Flavour Thesaurus, and The Flavour Thesaurus, More Flavours, got the whole room involved in a fascinating exploration of flavour, challenging us to think about how we describe what we eat and drink, and how the language we use can shape the way we think about food.

And Monica Wilde, research herbalist and, according to The Observer, “the godmother of extreme foraging”, took us into the world of wild food. Through The Wildbiome Project, Monica is studying the health and ecological impacts of living solely on a wild-food diet, raising questions about our relationship with the plants growing all around us.

But what happens when all of that thinking makes its way into actual product development?

Our Head of Food & Beverage, Daniel Jones, brought the conversation firmly into NPD, showcasing some of the delicious and innovative products that can be created with botanical extracts, including a wonderfully nutritious baobab kefir, showcased earlier in the day by Gus Le Breton, alongside a host of other food and beverage innovations demonstrating just how much scope there is to work with botanicals beyond “the norm”.

Over in the cosmetics section, the conversation moved from traditional botanical knowledge to supply chains, biotechnology and emerging science.

We explored Silver Cluster Leaf and its journey from source and development through regulatory compliance, product development and clinical testing.

Barbara Olioso (The Green Chemist) looked at how biotechnology and botanicals can work as complementary approaches to skincare innovation, while Dr Robert Nash of PhytoQuest took us into his pioneering research into iminosugars and their potent biological activities.

Monica Wilde also returned from a very different angle, exploring wild botanicals and traditional herbal strategies for skin conditions.

Different disciplines, different applications, but all asking what more we can learn from plants.

Then it was time to get everyone talking.

A lively panel discussion led by Account Manager Claire Harris brought together perspectives from across flavour, biodiversity, sourcing, food culture and NPD to tackle some big questions:

Are we limiting innovation by working with too narrow a palette of ingredients and flavours? What plants and possibilities are we overlooking?

There were plenty of different opinions, which was exactly what we wanted.

And we didn't just talk about botanicals.

Guests toured Blue Sky Botanics HQ, led by Team members including Botanical Specialist Liz Knight, seeing how botanical raw materials are transformed into extracts for food, beverage and cosmetics applications.

Then we tasted them…

The brilliant team at CSONS, including Chef and Co Founder Reuben Crouch, created a botanical feast incorporating our extracts alongside ingredients from our suppliers, including the best cooked Lion's Mane steaks ever tasted!

Our botanical cocktail creations also helped raise money for our partner charity Frank Water, founded by Katie Alcott MBE, bringing another very good reason to raise a glass!