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Ringve’s 50th Biodiversity Celebrations

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Fantastic day at Ringve Botaniske Hagen’s 50th anniversary garden party for the city. The theme for the day was Biodiversity and Sustainability! KVANN had a stand with a focus on perennial food plants that double as ornamental plants, insect-friendly or bird-friendly. We brought with us a number of such edi-ento-mentals and edi-avi-mentals (insect- or bird-friendly, edible ornamental plants) and many toom home plants or seeds! Eventually, all the flowers attracted biodiversity in the form of two admirals and a number of hoverflies! 
Thanks to all KVANN members and others who visited and helped us, and especially Jurgen Wegter who helped and brought flower meadow seeds from Fagerli Naturgård! 
Thanks also to Vibekke Vange and my colleagues at Ringve!
Pictures by Jurgen Wegter, Stephen Barstow and Meg Anderson!



Climbers, Perennial vegetables, Pollinators

First seed saved for 2021

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You’ll find old man’s beard or tysk klematis in Norwegian (Clematis vitalba) in Italian foraging books as the young cooked shoots are popular there in spring (they shouldn’t be eaten raw). There’s a very narrow time window for harvesting this, so I seldom eat much of it. However, it doubles as being an exceptoionally popular plant for pollinating insects (hoverflies and drone flies in particular) when it is in flower for a long period from late summer to autumn when there are few other flowers out.  lt cilmbs up onto my balcony which makes photography easier!
I started this from seed collected on the chalk downs of Hampshire (in the area where I grew up) about 25 years ago.