The magic of mushrooms: how they connect the plant world | fungi

Joe Perkins, like most gardeners, has typically been more animated by what’s going on above the ground than below it. The quality of the soil was important, no question, but what was really going on down there felt mysterious and impenetrable. As for fungi, it usually meant one thing in a garden, and that wasn’t good news.

“On a domestic level, our relationship and understanding of fungi in the past has very much been that it’s something about decay, it’s about disease, and it’s something that we don’t particularly want in our gardens,” says Perkins, a 45- year-old landscape architect based in Sussex, who won three awards at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 2019. “It’s fair to say that, as gardeners, we’ve not always fully understood – and I still don’t – the importance of these systems.”

What changed for Perkins was reading research by the American mycologist and fungi guru Dr Paul Stamets and British biologist Merlin Sheldrake’s 2020 revelatory book, Entangled Life. This year, the tech giant, now called Meta, has commissioned him to make another Chelsea garden and Perkins has decided to build an immersive environment that celebrates the symbiotic exchange between soil, fungi and plants.

“Our relationship with fungi is changing, and I think it will be an irreversible change,” he predicts. “You find yourself getting caught up in all the huge implications of it. It’s a totally separate kingdom to plants and animals, and it’s possibly the biggest kingdom about which we know very, very little. If you imagine how the Victorian plant hunters felt when they were discovering all these new plants back in the 18th and 19th century, it’s almost like that. It’s the new frontier, isn’t it?

At this point, a glossary might be handy. “Fungi” is the overarching name for a kingdom of spore-producing organisms that feed on organic matter. “Mushrooms” are the fruiting bodies of fungi, the place where spores are produced. Mushrooms are sometimes compared to icebergs, because most of the activity is actually taking place under the surface, out of sight. Here, networks of “mycelium”, the vegetative part of the fungus, twist through the soil and make connections between plants. It’s now understood that more than 90% of plants depend on mycorrhizal fungi for improving their water and nutrient absorption, which has led to these networks being called the “Wood Wide Web”.

Jumping off from the theme of interconnectedness, Perkins’s upcoming Chelsea design will include a large timber pavilion, based on hexagonal structures that represent mycelium pathways, and feature two habitats: woodland edge and a stylized meadow. If you choose to look for them, Perkins makes plenty of nods to sustainability and the threats posed by climate change, but there will also be a vibrant color scheme. “It has to be a beautiful garden as well, because it’s Chelsea,” he says.

Perkins’s new fascination with fungi and their mycorrhizal relationships with plants is not just theoretical; it has made an impact on how he gardens on a practical level, too. “The old advice was to get air into the soil and get rid of all the weeds and everything. And actually, the process of digging up through that surface layer just pulls apart all the mycelial connections. So, from my observations, I would say don’t do that. Leave the soil alone.”

Perkins has other radical, even hair-raising tips for gardeners. “Don’t be too tidy,” he says. “Some fungi are decomposers and they will take the dead plant material back into the soil and recycle it, and make it available to the other plants for nutrients. If you really don’t want to do that, at least leave some towards the back of the borders, so there are some opportunities for that to happen.”

Fungi, of course, is not only the horticulturist’s friend. These organisms are now finding innovative applications in fashion, health, technology and art. Also in construction: Biohm was founded in 2016 in Bermondsey, south London, by Ehab Sayed, a 31-year-old originally from Egypt. The company looks to the natural world for inspiration and its team of 20 is currently experimenting with more than 300 different strains of mycelium in an effort to “train” them to consume waste from food and building processes, even plastic, that would otherwise end up in landfill. Biohm has also developed mycelium insulation, which is competitive with traditional petrochemical and plastic-based construction materials in its thermal and acoustic properties, but safer and non-toxic.

Last year, Biohm received backing from Waitrose, which created a £1m grant from the sale of carrier bags, to fund its work on breaking down plastics using mycelium. Sayed suggests that the results – which will be “transformational” – are just two years away from being available at scale. “The sky’s the limit,” he says. “We’re exploring projects in outer space at the moment, seeing how we can grow mycelium in a vacuum, and looking at how we can break down toxins that have been completely irremediable.”

What really excites both Sayed and Perkins, though, is how little we know about fungi and its byproducts. It is believed that we have only documented 6% of all fungal species: there could be anywhere between 2.2m and 3.8m species in the world, which is up to 10 times greater than the estimated number of plant species. “What I love about mycelium is it’s the source of life, really,” says Sayed. “It’s what enables the cycles of nature to take place. There’s so much we have to learn from it and we’ve barely scratched the surface.”
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show runs from 24-28 May