Thank you to Charles “Mr. Accordion Pissenlit” Frandelion for asking me over to Saint-Pascal (in the Kamouraska municipality) east of Quebec City and entertaining me with a great day enjoying the nature of his area and visiting the headquarters of La société des plantes, run by the legendary Patrice Fortier (www.lasocietedesplantes.com), where he works! Patrice was sadly in Italy…we will meet next time!
A Norwegian article about my visit and lecture at Sogn Jord- og Hagebruksskule i March 2017! http://sjh.no/2017/04/01/
Pleasant winter garden visit this week from a students at Fosen Folkehøgskole curious about permaculture, forest gardening and foraging……I don’t think I’ve shown folks around the garden in February before :) Despite the snow there was plenty to forage!
At the end of March 2015, I visited the small town of Riverton (Maori: Aparima) (population 1,430) in New Zealand to give a talk at the Riverton Heritage Harvest Festival! The invite to give a talk had come about by way of my friend Steve Hart who I had met at the European Permaculture Convergence in Bulgaria. Steve (who is from NZ) and his lovely lady Martina had moved to NZ that same summer and when I contacted them for suggestions for places to visit / talk, Steve was quick to recommended me to the organisers of the Riverton festival which coincided with my visit! A second contact, Jutta (now Jane) Meiforth who headed the local permaculture group here in Trondheim but who had also moved recently to NZ, wrote to me: “….you should try to visit the food forest belonging to Robert and Robyn Guyton: http://permaculturenews.org/2013/04/21/letters-from-new-zealand-a-permaculture-food-forest-in-the-far-south/” The video above convinced me that this event was essential on my tour of NZ (the Guytons were also central organisers of the festival!)
I’d been meaning to post something about my visit to the Guyton’s forest garden and the festival for a long time. What inspired me to do this was a fantastic new video of the Guytons’ food forest which my friend Peat Miller Moss ( a Kiwi who has strong Norwegian connections!). See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GJFL0MD9fc
If you watch the two videos above you will understand why I think (and hope) that one day Riverton and the Guytons will be recognised as one of the main global origins of the evolution of the New World diversified Perma-order! It really is an inspiring place, particularly as it started as degraded land, and the Guytons have inspired many New Zealand gardeners to plant food forests and, I’m told, have inspired folks to settle in Riverton, resulting in a hike in house prices! Nevertheless, there’s no mention of the Guytons and these very important developments on the town’s wikipedia page!
Below are 3 galleries of my own pictures from my visit to Riverton. The first gallery shows pictures from the food forest…unfortunately my best camera failed and it was getting dark and not the best time to visit being autumn….so these pictures don’t really do the place credit!
The gallery below has been posted before (FB: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153110186060860.1073742280.655215859&type=1&l=11d4819ff7) and shows the great display of heirloom potatoes, apples and tomatoes at the Festival! See https://
It includes various Maori potatoes (http://
Finally, a gallery of other pictures taken at the festival which was held at the Aparima College Hall in Riverton
After the festival was a great Pot luck Traditional Heritage Feast on the Saturday night! I remember teaching how to fold your own traditional seed packet sometime that evening. The following link shows how! https://fmanos.wordpress.com/tag/origami-seed-packets
I learned this some 30 years ago from my gardening friend Marie Gaden (now 86) who told me she had learned the technique from an old lady! Here’s one of Marie’s seed packets photographed on her table 2 years ago!
Last Monday I arrived in London for a work /family trip and despite a 2-3 hour delayed flight due to fog, I was able to have two hours at Chelsea Physic Garden before closing time at 4 pm.
So, here’s some pictures of mostly unusual edible plants spotted during my visit!
One of my favourite gardens…
A pleasant visit today from Angelina Hjelm from a little place called Lillpite (pop. 429 in 2010!) in Norrland in Sweden and a friend, traveller from Brisbane in Australia!
A visit to Geir Flatabø’s forest garden which is located high above the picturesque village of Ulvik at the end of an arm of the Hardangerfjord was an unexpected treat on my recent visit to western Norway! I knew we would meet Geir but I had misunderstood an email from Geir a couple of years ago that the red deer had eaten everything he’d tried to plant…far from it, many of hundreds of trees, bushes and herbaceous perennials that Geir has planted on his plot are thriving. To reach Norway’s largest and most diverse forest garden, we drive high up above the village. Geir’s plot is a narrow strip of land almost 1 km straight up the hill with large spruce tree plantations on either side (felled on Geir’s plot to make way for his garden). Some might call it an arboretum, but Geir is very knowledgeable about the uses of the trees and other plants, most of which are edible or have other uses and he does call it himself his forest garden. We (my host Eirik Lillebøe Wiken and I) pass through many climate zones as we climb the hill talking plants with Geir. He has planted according to hardiness and has used various natural techniques to protect young plants against the red deer…permaculture in other words! An amazing place that will only get better as the year’s go by…and we only got half way up the hill….time went quickly and suddenly Geir noticed the time and dashed off to get to the National Fungi Symposium which was being held nearby…he was giving a talk that evening on the fungi of Hardanger!
The document below is in Norwegian but contains many pictures from my first visit to Vestvågøy in the Lofoten Islands to see the stands of naturalised victory onion (seiersløk), Allium victorialis, including a harvesting trip with Judith van Koesveld (she and her partner Christoph produce a local pesto from the plants). The document also contains an account of a visit to Brynhild Mørkved at the botanical gardens in Tromsø to see the collection of Allium victorialis accessions from different parts of this onion’s extensive range (from the Pyrenees to Japan). Plants vary quite a lot in their form. Finally, I visited Geir Flatabø in Ulvik (Hardanger) in south west Norway and he showed me the large naturalised stand of this plant next to the Granvin river. There are also a few pictures from a collection of heritage ornamentals at the Lofotmuseet and from a visit to a once great but now derelict garden at Finneset (Steinhagen). All pictures were taken in June 2009.