It was fun putting together my talk “A Virtual Edimentals Walk Around Burnley Gardens” today 6th March, although I’m not used to talking at 9 am! To explain, it was a climate friendly zoom talk from home with the good folks of The Herb Society of Victoria at Burnley in Melbourne, Australia. During 2014 when my book was published and COVID lock down in 2020, I travelled the globe giving talks based on the book and did many walks and talks in botanical gardens and other plant collections. About 1/3 of all plants are edible, so maybe over 100,000 species have been used by people around the world and there is never a shortage of edible plants to be found.
This time I based the talk mostly on a plant list from the Burnley Gardens as well as one from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, so talking about plants growing locally.
Although the talk was only for fully payed up members of the society, my brother in England Trevor Barstow (picture) managed to infiltrate the proceedings, probably informing security that he was my virtual roadie 🙂
Thanks to Sam Taylor and the crew for putting it on and dealing with the technical side of things!
A major storm was at its peak as I talked and the house was rocking, but luckily the electricity supply held!

These are the plants I talked about (the set list 😉 ) and there were a few new ones!
Hosta
Fennel
Aralia cordata
Aralia elata
Angelica gigas
Angelica archangelica
Crithmum maritimum
Yucca
Heracleum lanatum
Smyrnium (Alexanders)
Dystaenia takesimana
Asparagus
Artichokes and cardoons
Dahlia
Aster cordifolius
Aster scaber
Jerusalem artichoke
Rudbeckia laciniata
Ligularia fischeri
Horseradish
Campanula punctata and other Campanulaceae
Lilium davidii and Lilium lancifolium
Allium stipitatum
Allium fistulosum
Allium tuberosum
Allium schoenoprasum
Allium ampeloprasum

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