Urban Farming Collective
More than a wellness brand, we're a collective of people choosing natural rituals over quick fixes, bringing the wisdom of nature into everyday life.
Harvest Note
Locally cultivated, carefully dried, and small-batch extracted for maximum purity.
For centuries, cultures across Asia have made mushrooms part of everyday wellbeing. We honour that history without romanticising it.
Our extracts are made from the fruiting body, then tested for identity, purity and potency. Nature, with receipts.
A teaspoon. A pause. A small, repeatable act that meets you where you are and helps you move through the day.
Urban Farming Collective started in an unlikely place, a comedy club that suddenly couldn’t operate.
When the pandemic brought live entertainment to a standstill, our founder, Simon Hughes, found himself unable to run his comedy business. With unexpected time on his hands, he turned to one of his hobbies: growing mushrooms.
What began as something to keep busy quickly became something much bigger.
Mushrooms grow fast, they’re fascinating to watch, and you don’t need a huge backyard or farm to grow them. Simon began developing simple grow kits that allowed people to experience the process themselves at home.
The response was almost immediate. At a time when people were spending more time at home, growing food and looking for something new to do, the kits quickly grew in popularity. What started as a hobby became a business, and Urban Farming Collective was born.
Since then, we’ve expanded into fresh gourmet mushrooms, grow kits, cultivation supplies and mushroom-based products, while continuing to experiment with more sustainable ways of producing food.
Now UFC is entering its next chapter with our new country property, creating a place where we can grow, teach and bring people together through workshops in mushroom cultivation, sustainable living, self-sufficiency, relationships and reconnecting away from technology.
What started with a few mushrooms during lockdown has grown into a much bigger mission:
Grow food.
Learn skills.
Reconnect with what matters.
We’re growers first. We don’t just put our name on mushroom products, we understand mushrooms because we’ve spent years growing them.
Our focus is on quality, sustainability, education and keeping things local wherever possible. We grow fresh gourmet mushrooms, produce our own cultivation products and continually experiment with ways to reduce waste and make mushroom farming more sustainable.
We’re also big believers in sharing knowledge. Whether you’re buying mushrooms for dinner, trying your first grow kit or wanting to understand cultivation at a deeper level, we want UFC to be somewhere you can learn as well as shop.
And we’re not interested in pretending sustainability means having a green label on a packet. We’re constantly looking at practical ways to reuse materials, reduce waste and make more of what we already have.
Melbourne, AU
Founder, Urban Farming Collective
"Growing food has a remarkable way of slowing us down, reconnecting us with nature, and grounding our wellbeing in a fast-paced world."
Hi, I’m Simon. After years of building businesses and bringing people together, I discovered an unexpected calling in mushroom cultivation. What began as a personal passion quickly evolved into a much broader mission.
Urban Farming Collective exists to inspire sustainable living, foster self-sufficiency, and help people reconnect with what truly matters. Through premium mushroom products, actionable education, and hands-on workshops, we make sustainable practices accessible to everyone.
"The future isn't about disconnecting from the world—it's about reconnecting with ourselves, our communities, and the land beneath our feet."
Whether you're cultivating your very first mushroom kit, picking up new skills online, or joining us for a immersive weekend getaway, we're thrilled to welcome you to our community.
"I've tried every sleep gummy on the market. These are the first that actually got me into a real deep sleep without the groggy morning after."
"Did the beginner growing workshop with my daughter and we left with our own oyster mushroom log. Two weeks later we harvested our first flush together."
"The Mushroom Matcha is now a non-negotiable part of my morning. Calm focus without the 11am crash I used to get from coffee."
"Booked a weekend at the country property before it even opened to the public. If it's anything like the city workshops, it'll be worth every cent."
Everything you need to know about growing, buying and learning with UFC.
Yes. We grow our gourmet mushrooms here in Victoria and are expanding production at our new country property.
Our range changes throughout the year, but we work with gourmet and specialty varieties including oyster, lion’s mane and shiitake mushrooms.
Yes. Our grow kits are designed to make growing mushrooms at home approachable, even if you’ve never grown anything before.
Not at all. That’s the whole idea. We provide straightforward instructions, and we’re happy to help if you have questions along the way.
We harvest our mushrooms by hand and aim to get them to customers as quickly as possible. Buying directly from a local grower means they haven’t spent unnecessary time travelling through a long supply chain.
Yes. With our move to our new country property, we’ll be expanding into hands-on workshops covering mushroom growing, sustainable living, food production and self-sufficiency, with further wellbeing and reconnection experiences planned.
We’re working towards keeping as much material in use as possible. Spent mushroom substrate can have a second life rather than simply becoming waste, and we’re continually experimenting with practical ways to reuse it.
Yes. We work with restaurants, retailers, markets and other businesses. Get in touch with us to discuss availability and wholesale quantities.
Our products are available through our online store and selected markets, with availability depending on what we’re currently producing.
Our new property isn’t open for general visits yet. As we develop the site, we’ll announce workshops, events and opportunities to experience UFC in person.
