Category Archives: Walk and talk

Visit to Pro Specie Rara

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!

See also on Facebook here:  https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10156381535005860&type=1&l=add4af4a2e

Pictures and review of my walk and talk at Merian Gärten: https://www.prospecierara.ch/de/news/rueckblick-around-the-world-in-80-plants
Here’s a review of my lecture:  https://einfachnachhaltig.net/2018/05/14/around-the-world-in-80-plants

KVANN meet in Trondheim and Malvik; Ringve Open Day

Day 3 of the KVANN (Norwegian Seed Savers) meet was at the Ringve Botanical Garden Open Day in Trondheim. The day started early as I drove one of the participants to the station in Trondheim and then spent a couple of hours collecting some of the ingredients for a multi-species salad. Including plants collected on a walk, talk and forage for KVANN members, we managed 111 ingredients in the salad! Thanks to all who helped make it a very successful and fun weekend!

Mount Stewart

An album of pictures from my visit to National Trust property Mount Stewart on the Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland!
I return for the Planters Seminar in September!
Thanks to Neil Porteous for having me over :)