A WOMAN who gathers wild mushrooms from the New Forest has challenged a ban preventing her from selling them to hotels and restaurants.
Brigitte Tee-Hillman, who has given seminars on mushrooms to kitchen staff at Buckingham Palace, asserts that she has the right to continue picking fungi despite a blanket ban on commercial exploitation enforced by the Forestry Commission. Mrs Tee-Hillman, who trades under the name Mrs Tee’s Wild Mushrooms, has been selling to restautants and hotels near her home in Pennington, Hampshire, in the New Forest, since 1973.
When she ignored a warning to stop picking them, she was arrested for theft and had 14lb of chanterelles confiscated. Yesterday she asked a judge at Winchester Crown Court to allow her to challenge the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs over the ban.
Vivian Chapman, representing Mrs Tee-Hillman, told the court that the Forestry Commission was aware of her activities for years before any attempt was made to stop her. He said that anyone who had enjoyed a right unchallenged for 20 years, such as right of way, can claim to have acquired that right in perpetuity. He said: “Over a 20-year period has she been exercising her right to pick mushrooms in the New Forest? In the case of an edible fungus, it is part of the land. It is something that grows out of the land like grass or fruit. It is capable of ownership because an edible fungus, once picked, is owned by the person who picks it.”
Judge Iain Hughes, QC, was told that the German-born Mrs Tee-Hillman started picking wild mushrooms in the New Forest in the summer of 1973. In September 2001 she received a letter from the Forestry Commission informing her that the picking of wild fungi for commercial purposes was illegal. In November 2002 she was arrested when a Forestry Commission worker called the police and the mushrooms she had been gathering were confiscated.
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Mr Chapman said that there was nothing in law to state that wild fungi cannot be picked in the New Forest National Park. Mrs Tee-Hillman collected and sold mushrooms in her native Germany before she moved to England. She also imports many varieties from around the world so she can offer a year-round supply.
She holds seminars at which people can learn about the identification and preparation of edible mushrooms.
The case continues.