Our story

If you walk along the banks of the River Don in Sheffield you'll find something that shouldn't be there: lush groves of wild fig trees, thriving far from their Mediterranean home, and now home themselves to a rich diversity of life.

Nobody planted them. During Sheffield's steel boom, workers snacked on fig biscuits on their breaks, and the seeds ended up in the sewers, then the river. What should have been the end of the story wasn't - because the warm water discharged from the steel factories' cooling process turned the Don into an accidental nursery. The conditions were, improbably, perfect. So the figs took root, and grew.

We didn't grow up in Sheffield either. Like those seeds, we arrived from elsewhere and found a city that took us in, warmed us, and gave us the conditions to put down roots of our own. Wild Fig Research takes its name from that story because we see something of ourselves in it: transplanted, unexpected, but thriving and committed to make a lasting contribution to the city and communities that have made Sheffield our home.