On Sunday 24th May we held our first wild food forage in the garden at Potager with Rachel Lambert. As I posed for just one more photograph with a trug full of garden produce for The English Garden magazines 'eats and treats' feature Rachel began to show the group what was edible in the hedge beside the cafe glasshouse.
As we walked through our mini plantation of nursery stock trees we emerged into the two acre field that one day will be under vegetable cultivation but is now being mown to supress the bramble, bracken and nettles. It was just these invasive plants we were looking for though and baskets and bags were quickly filled with iron rich nettle tops and great lengths of cleavers.
All the ingredients were separated as we picked so up would go the shout where is the nettle bag lady or do we need more bramble buds?
As we returned through the Potager I guided the group and we picked some more conventional salad leaves like broad leaved sorrel and winter lettuce.
It was great to watch the group listening to Rachel and then picking copious quantities of what til then they had considered wild weeds.
The two hours soon went and we were back in the cafe kitchen stripping leaves, blanching, chopping and combining ingredients into our meal.
Some of us were dispatched to collect some flowers yellow Hemercalis or day lily, vivid orange calendula marigold, purple pom poms of chives and white bells of tri cornered leek all to add colour and flavour to the salads.
Elderflowers for fritters were hard to find as they were only just appearing and sage flowers were picked for the ice cream Awen made with creme fraiche and agave syrup which was served with thyme shortbreads.
Guests for the meal joined us and we ate around a big table on the lawn as the sun went down, all the participants inspired to cook up more foragings and grow unusual edibles in their own gardens.
Returning to help the guys out from Kehelland Horticultural Training Centre for people with special needs with their floral exhibit at the Royal Cornwall Show was a great experience. We won a silver medal for our Cornish Cottage Garden.
Not naturally competative in the horticultural world I had to learn from the other exhibitors what the judges would be looking for, knowing a gold would be nigh on impossible I was well chuffed with the recognition of a silver.
Helping Peter's sister Penny to create a permaculture garden in her Manchester back yard was equally rewarding and 400 visitors looked at it on a garden trail raising money for charity. The parking space was turned into beds for raspberries and potatoes, chickens now live behind a newly built brick wall, old tin cans are planted with tumbling tomatoes and a row of potted fruit trees make a divide between the raised wooden planters and the outside dining table.
While in Manchester we visited a great permaculture project near Burnley called Offshoots, it is well worth a visit and we were made very welcome and given a guided tour of the site which is rich in diversity, growing food crops, making yurts, charcoal and timber from their trees in a sawmill.
The elderflowers are now plentiful and Anna has made some elderflower cordial for the cafe so we can enjoy the taste of summer rain or shine .
Hope you can visit us soon and see the garden in its summer glory of colours.
