I’m very chuffed and honoured to have been asked to be guest speaker at next year’s Midwest Wild Harvest Festival on September 27-29. The festival is organised by Melissa Price and my favourite foraging author Samuel Thayer!
Norwegian: I september 2012 besøkte jeg Grimstad for å snakke om min bok Around the World in 80 plants som snart skulle se dagens lys! Jeg holdt et foredrag for Grimstad bys museum og Aust-Agder sopp- og nyttevekstforening. Jeg ble også invitert til Bioforsk Landvik hvor Åsmund Asdal fra genressursenteret hadde et kontor. Jeg hadde samarbeidet med Åsmund over flere år som leder av Planteklubben for Grønnsaker (Norwegian Seed Savers). Jeg ga en kort foredrag for staben etterfulgt av en tur på forsøksarealene for å se førstehånd flere av klonsamlingene som Planteklubben mottok materiale fra hvert år!
English:In September 2012, I visited Grimstad in the south of Norway to give a talk about my soon to be published book Around the World in 80 plants to Grimstad bys museer and Aust-Agder sopp- og nyttevekstforening (the museum and local group of the Norwegian Useful Plants Society). I was also invited to nearby Bioforsk Landvik where Åsmund Asdal of the Norwegian Genetic Resource Centre had an office. I had collaborated with Åsmund over a number of years as leader of Norwegian Seed Savers (Planteklubben for Grønnsaker). I gave a short afternoon talk to the staff followed by a tour of the grounds to see first hand several of the clonal collections that Planteklubben received material from each year!
Bioforsk Landvik
Old Norwegian tomatoes
Rhubarb (rabarbra) plants on the move to a new location for the National clone collection
Åsmund gave us a guided tour of the grounds
The Norwegian clone collection of horseradish (pepperrot)
ORhubarb (rabarbra) collection
Blackberries (bjørnebær)
Åsmund and Aiah Noack from Naturplanteskolen in Denmark, who was on holiday in Norway and stopped by!
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Rows of Oxyria digyna (mountain sorrel / fjellsyre), part of a revegetation project based on hardy herbs from the mountains
The Wild Plants Lady meets the Extreme Salad Man to discuss ready salted vegetables on the Magoito Cliffs north of Lisbon!
A) Crithmum maritimum (rock samphire or death samphire; perrexil-do-mar); this is the first plant in my book and was my first plant in my talk at Ecoaldeias Janas the day before
B) Helichrysum stoechas (Portuguese curry plant; perpétuas-das-areias)
C) Beta vulgaris ssp maritima (sea beet; acelga-brava)
D) Plantago coronopus (buck’s-horn plantain, minutina or erba stella; diabelha)
Thank you so much for showing me the vegetable gardens of the sea cliffs of your home village, Fernanda Botelho :)
Thanks to Jorge Carona for filming and driving :)
With Ana Marques!
The first slide in my talk at Ecoaldeias Janas was this one about Death Samphire! More people have probably died harvesting this than any other vegetable! Fernanda asked me if I’d brought my rope!!
On 4th April 2018, I took advantage of my trip to Switzerland to attend the The Potential of Perennials for Food Resilience symposium to visit KVANN’s (Norwegian Seed Savers) sister organisation Pro Specie Rara in Basel. Many thanks to Director Béla Bartha (since 2002) and Head of Education, Esther Meduna for making me feel so welcome. The trial grounds and offices of Pro Specie Rara are located in the Merian Gärten, a botanical garden in Basel. I lead a walk and talk of the trial grounds and botanical collections followed by an evening lecture at Markthalle in the centre of Basel! A great place for a seed saver organisation to be located! Béla also showed me their seed vault a specially climate controlled room (15C and 15% humidity). The walk and talk was sadly interrupted by heavy rain and we moved indoors and I did a short version of my evening lecture instead!
On Thursday 5th April 2018, I arrived to give a talk at a place called Neubad in Lucerne! I had no idea that I would be talking from the deep end of a swimming pool ;)
Neubad, formerly a swimming pool, is now a thriving alternative cultural centre! Across the road I also visited Neugarten, a small community garden.
Thanks to Francesca Blachnik and Sven for inviting me and showing me around!
So, Im talking in the swimming pool…that’s a first!!
Tempting to lecture from the diving board!
….or an original entry…
Before the talk I visited the community garden across the road!
Sven showing me the bee hotel
On the roof of the old swiming pool, Neubad!
The views of Mount Pilatus (2,128m) are spectacular
Mount Pilatus (2,128m)
The audience sat on the slope between the deep and shallow ends
I travelled yesterday from the PDC course at Hurdal Prestegård (rectory) to another rectory in Ringebu in the Gudbrandsdalen about 3 hours north by train! I was invited by KVANN (Norwegian Seed Savers) member Halldis Myhre Tvete to give a talk on perennial vegetables and edimentals to the gardening group (hagegruppa på Ringebu Prestegården)!
I was very impressed by the garden which the largely voluntary gardening group have created since 2006 from an overgrown garden with just a few original plants such as the Ringebu rose!
Most of the plants are Norwegian heritage plants, including a large collection of historical roses, berry and fruit trees, hops, Dahlias and herbs!
The view from the garden is also spectacular looking down and north along the green glacial river (Gudbrandslågen) and the neighbouring Ringebu Stave Church!
Looking north along Gudbrandslågen
The rectory, the oldest parts of which are from the 1730s!
The rectory, the oldest parts of which are from the 1730s!
The rectory, the oldest parts of which are from the 1730s!
Old historical perennials
Halldis Myhre Tvete was my guide!
Halldis says “..and here’s the vegetables” as we approach a long border of Hostas with historical roses
Many of the roses had informative signs with historical details, this one from Finland
Hurdalsrosen!
A common local form of rhubarb has undulating leaves
Poisonous Veratrum (confusion species for Hosta) with seiersløk (Allium victorialis) from Lofoten!
Wild burdock (borre)
The spire of Ringebu stavkirke
A collection of roses after Norway’s most prolific rose breeder
Hemerocallis (daylilies)
A white flowered Rosa rugosa hybrid
Halldis told me that this is probably the Rosa rugosa (tomato rose) with largest hips
Despite the drought, it’s a good year for apples (last year was very bad as in Hurdal)
Collection of berry bushes, including white, red and black variants of redcurrant…The black variety (svartrips) was apparently an old variety hereand different from the black redcurrant I have, which is a different species (Ribes petraeum bibersteinii). This variant has large berries! A bed with Vossakvann (Voss Angelica) line Bordalen will be planted in this area next year!
Just a few pictures from the Dokka Hagefestival (Garden Festival) this weekend 23rd June! I gave a talk outside under the festival “sail” supported by some 20 different perennial vegetables harvested from my garden the day before and KVANNs (Norwegian Seed Savers) stand which board member Lone Dybdal helped me with. After the talk we had a successful auction of the plants I’d brought along including a selection of rare and heirloom onions!
I’ve talked twice before at the festival, first in 2012 which was the first year it was arranged. I was then asked back the year after as I’d only got about halfway around the world the first time :)
Thanks to Tove Vesterås who’s been the festival “General” since the start!
The “sail”
Lone manned the stand. We sold my book and a few “loose-weight” plants
Most of the stands selling plants etc were on the main street of the town
A nursery specialising in historical perennials
The collection of perennial vegetables I’d brought along to illustrate my talk including various Alliums – scorodoprasum, cernuum, ursinum, victorialis, hymennorhizum, nutans, pskemense etc
Introduction from Dokka Hagelag
In action, Angelica archangelica (Kvann) on the table and Ligularia fischeri behind my back! (picture by Lone)
The main reason for my visit to Bergen was the Saturday course on perennial vegetables for the organisation Bærekraftig Liv (literally Sustainable Living). We had perfect weather for the day which started with a beginners course followed by foraging around the garden of Landås hovedgård (lysthus), a historical building where Edvard Grieg spent much of his youth! The afternoon session was my normal Around the World talk. Bærekraftig Liv have a long term lease here in collaboration with Bergen kommune where the gardens and house will be restored! https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land%C3%A5s_hovedg%C3%A5rd
A great mixed crowd of folk turned up and, yes, I’d love to come back next year!
Perennials can be a partial solution to the problem that Bergen has with the Iberian slug (brunsnegl) which disillusions many new vegetable gardeners in Bergen!
Landås Hovedgård
Plant sales table…with many perennial edibles
Plant sales table…with many perennial edibles
We harvested Tilia (lime /lind) leaves for the salad
We harvested Tilia (lime /lind)
We harvested Tilia (lime /lind) leaves for the salad
We harvested Tilia (lime /lind) leaves for the salad
Day liy (daglilje) flower buds were also used in the salad
Day liy (daglilje) flower buds were also used in the salad
Landås Hovedgård
Felleshage (community garden)
Liv Karin Lund Thomassen introduction to Landås Hovedgård
One of the participants showed me this Hablitzia being sold commercialy locally under its Swedish name, rankespinat
Thanks to Anna who told me she’d heard my name mentioned on BBC Gardener’s Question Time yesterday in connection with my June appearance at the programme’s summer party at Mount Stewart in Northern Ireland :)
