ASPARAGUS grown at Badsey won a "best in the world tag" from a former Vale of Evesham woman now living in America.

Valerie Gobie, of Occoguan, Virginia, contacted the Journal after reading about Bomfords at Salford Priors going into asparagus growing in a big way.

Her father, Leslie Davis, born and raised in Bengeworth, and mother Olive, who came from Herefordshire, started Twyford Filling Station at the junction of The Lenches and the Evesham to Stratford road, very slowly in about 1950.

After the Second World War, Mr Davis went back into market gardening with his business named Evesham Direct Supplies. He thought he would try selling strawberries on the bare corner from a wheelbarrow to make a little extra.

"My father was a workaholic, always on the go," Mrs Gobie said. "He did so well there he asked Mr Vaughan Haines, who owned the land, if he could rent the corner from him, and finally built a wooden shop with a drop-down front. I remember 1953 when we decorated with streamers and flowers and painted the shop red, white and blue for Coronation Year."

Mr Davis had created a gold mine. Mrs Gobie said: "He kept adding all fruits and vegetables in season, including asparagus of course. He and my mother built a lovely home there, which is still there today, but they say it has never been the same since my father left in 1970, then the by-pass came through and blocked it out."

She continued: "The stall was a great tourist attraction, bus tours galore and packed 10 to 12 hours a day. After they moved into the house my father then kept open all year round - always something to sell - and it became the local grocery store for the Lenches as well. Also people would constantly run out of petrol by him and he would have to run them into town to pick some up, so he finally decided and he should be selling it. That's how it became a filling station, which also helped put him on the map."

It was while all that was going on that Mrs Davis had the bright idea of starting an asparagus mail order business, which was also very successful every year in its season.

Mrs Gobie said: "It had to be Badsey gras - only Badsey had the perfect soil for the best asparagus in the country and therefore the world. She died in 1968, so she must have operated it for up to 10 years. She would have suppliers from Badsey pick and send her the choicest asparagus and then she would have it packed and sent, the same morning of course, via the railway that left from Evesham.

"Among her clientele were Sir Winston Churchill's Estate, Sir Anthony Eden and Charles Laughton. Everyone wanted her choice asparagus. I have tried asparagus all over the USA and cannot duplicate the taste. Even when I was in England two years ago I stopped at a farm outside Bidford and even theirs did not have the same flavour."

Mrs Gobie said: "It was a great era. My father knew everyone in agriculture around the area, they were both highly respected, did a grand job and I'm proud of them."

Happy as she is in Virginia, Mrs Gobie does miss her Vale home in "the most beautiful country in the world when you get off the motorways".