On Sunday 25th May 2025 we celebrated spring at the Væres Venners Community garden in Trondheim with a pot-luck party (kurvfest) and although the wind was strong there was no rain, unlike the days on either side. My contribution as usual was a diversity salad, this time based only on ingredients harvested in the World Garden (Verdenshagen) with roseroot (rosenrot) flowers in the centre and decorated with plants organised geographically as in the garden itself! The list of 89 plants used can be found here. As usual there were a diversity of dishes provided by other members, many with home grown or foraged ingredients. The party started with a talk by my friend Jurgen Wegter of Fagerli Naturgård in Vanvikan (on the other side of the fjord and just visible from Være) on biodiversity and what we can do to help in particular wild bees. Jurgen wrote a report for us Tiltaksplan for biologisk mangfold giving us advice as to what we can do to help and increase the biodiversity of the community garden.
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!
To celebrate our good friends’ Jurgen Wegter and Ingvild Haga’s 50th birthdays together with Meg’s 50-year anniversary of arriving in Europe for the first time (in Southampton near where I lived at the time) as well as my 50 year anniversary of leaving school and a memorable holiday with 20-30 school friends in Newton Ferrers in Devon, we made a special gourmet dinner of green mac-cheese. It had masses of veg mixed in – the year’s first broad beans and swiss chard, chicory, common sow thistle (Sonchus oleraceus), Allium senescens leaves, shallots and garlic from last year, rehydrated winter chantarelles, golpar – ground seed of hogweed – Heracleum spp., together with ramsons salt, chili, sun dried tomatoes and mustard, all in a wholegrain spelt white sauce with wholegrain spelt pasta; it was topped with alpine bistort bulbils). Not to be left out, the Extreme Salad Man contributed one of his Meditteranean diet inspired multispecies salads commemorating it is now almost 20 years since he put together a salad from home grown ingredients in Malvik comprising 537 ingredients. something the world hasn’t seen before or since (see https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=18997). The record was set on 24th August 2003. This time there were a mere 106 ingredients….sad to see, but he must be losing it…. Thanks to Jurgen for the salad pictures:
The Extreme Salad Man photographs his latest creation
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
