A great evening at the Resilience Hub in Portland, Maine after a tour of Aaron Parker’s Edgewood Nursery where I’m staying! Possibly the best stocked edible perennial nursery that I’ve visited! More on this when I return!
Aaron was one of the first I sent seed of Hablitzia to in North America early in 2009, after Jonathan Bates (Eric Toensmeier’s partner at Holyoke). Hablitzia is now a best seller at the nursery and Aaron told me is also grown commercially in Maine, particularly valuable due to the early spring harvest! Another person I sent seed to in 2009, Greg Martin was also there last night!
Thanks also to Aaron for setting up my tour of New England!
Aaron Parker’s contribution to the pre-talk potluck, with a little picking help from yours truly
Aaron’s flyer for our walk and talk on Saturday at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston!
The Resilience Hub venue in Portland, Maine!
Aaron introducing me!
Hablitzia tamnoides, a best seller at Edgewood Nursery, 10 years after I sent Aaron seed :)
After our visit to the Government House garden, Solara Goldwynn took me on a visit to an amazing inspiring ecohouse, gardens and perennials nursery in the Highlands area just outside of the city of Victoria (BC) where she and husband Tayler were living in a flat with owners Ann and Gord Baird
You can read much more about Ann and Gord on their web site at https://eco-sense.ca
The location of Ecosense north west of Victoria on southernmost Vancouver Island!
Zoom in to the plot, the gardens and house surrounded by forest. The nursery is around the pond seen at the top.
About the house from the Eco-sense website: “Our home achieves these objectives by incorporating sustainability and research with solar PV agrid intertie, solar thermal heating, rain water harvesting from a living roof, composting toilet, grey water re-use, passive solar design, and all within North America’s first code approved seismically engineered load bearing insulated cob residence”.
Late March is still early spring, but here is clearly a diversity garden
Perennial kale. Daubenton?
Allium cernuum, native nodding onion
Cultivated dandelion :)
Victoria has a mild warm and dry in summer climate
Gord Baird
Solara showed me around the gardens
Earth chestnut (unsure if this is the real thing Bunium bulbocastanum, often mixed up with Oenanthe pimpinelloides in the trade).
A dandelion spiral?
In the woods I found this plant that I also saw just coming into flower in the harbour area. Pacific sanicle (Sanicula crassicaulis) is a much bigger plant than European S. europaea, reaching over 1m. Some west coast Sanicula species such as S. graveolens and S. bipinnatifida were used as spring vegetables, but I only find medicinal uses of this species.
Claytonia in flower was a common edible of woodlands – I hadn’t thought of this plant before as a shade lover…now I know :)
Erythronium and Dodecatheon in the woods
Rumex
…and Hablitzia tamnoides had preceded me :)
Hablitzia bed :)
Fuki (Petasites japonica) naturalising by the pond
..and fuki for sale
Prunus “Valentine”
A “Food security top pick”, perennial leek (Elephant garlic, I think)
Sea buckthorn (Hippophae)
Good? King Henry!
Day lilies
Wild ginger (Asarum)
Skirret
European and Asian plums
A single fawnlily was in flower
Mahonia
Saanicula +++
Sedum spathulifolium? in the woods
More forest dwelling Claytonia perfoliata (miner’s lettuce)
Sedum spathulifolium?
An early flowering Ranunculus spp.
Dodecatheon hendersonii?
Dodecatheon hendersonii?
Cardamine
Horseradish
…and for my last evening on Vancouver Island I was invited to a great potluck dinner at Eco-sense with Solara and Tayler (picture), the Bairds and friends. Thanks folks!
Yesterday, I gave my first talk about my (second) love of onions (alternative title All you wanted to know about Alliums but were afraid to ask!)….fittingly in the nursery with I believe the best selection of Alliums being sold as foodplants in Europe if not the world , my friend Aiah Noack’s Naturplanteskolen just outside of Copenhagen. Aiah is the author of an excellent book Fantasilater (fantasy salads), only in Danish so far which also includes several Alliums. My book Around the World in 80 plants mentions some 45 Allium species!
In a little over 2 hours I covered about 66 of the world’s cold hardy onions and over 80 if we include cultivars and subspecies…
Other onion related topics were also covered, such as “grow your own fireworks and Xmas decorations”, “Allium as a dancing partner”, the Allium microphone (Alliomike) and the garlic scape armband to keep “wild” animals, trolls and mosquitos away (Transylvanian Garlic keeps vampires away too)… It was a fun afternoon with yet another great group of edimentals fans! ;)
The video is of one of my pictures about drying Persian Shallots with a shot of my drying racks over my wood burning stove. Someone noticed that you could actually see heat rising through the racks!!!! (a wood burning stove was on behind the projector) ;)
Aiah with a collection of late flowering Alliums from the nursery on display for the participants…
The day started with a tour of the (smelly) part of the nursery ;)
A large selection of Alliums for sale…
Aiah has constructed an Allium display garden with some 60 species :)
Allium nursery
Alliza for the food break (Allium pizza!)
Somebody pointed out there was an onion inflorescence hanging from the roof, so I stopped to take this shot :)
Not onion related but there were also delicious rolls decorated with seed of this plant, Plantago major “Atropurpurea”!
Well, not only Mandy’s plot, a group of local people in Ashburton, Devon got together to buy The Field a few years ago to grow vegetables communally! It is truly an inspiration to see how productive what was sheep pasture can actually be!! We need much more of this and I’m imagining the hills around covered in Andean tuber crops in a few years from now rather than sheep!!
It was great to meet you all and a big bonus that Owen and good lady made the journey up from Cornwall to join us!!
More pictures in the album below!
See Mandy’s blog of my visit here: http://www.incrediblevegetables.co.uk/stephen-barstow-visit/
I’ve had a couple of meetings in Copenhagen over the last couple of days and I visited Naturplanteskolen again. The nursery was looking really good and plants had grown dramatically since I gave the course there only 3 weeks ago!
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
