Tag Archives: Trondheim

PROMOTING PERENNIAL VEGETABLES IN THE SWEDISH FOOD SUPPLY

In recent years, vegetable growers have started to open their eyes to perennial vegetables and quite a few are growing several types. Many more growers are curious and interested, but haven’t got started yet.
Now you can download the report put together by Eva Johansson, Annevi Sjöberg and Johanna Karlén through visits and interviews with growers of perennial vegetables all over the Nordics, including my 3 gardens in Trondheim / Malvik in June.
See https://perennagronsaker.se and click on the link! NB! In Swedish!
(Nice that the Onion Garden Chicago made the front page!)



Organic week in Trøndelag / Økouka i Trøndelag

Last week was National Organic Week (Økouka), a busy week for me as I had two garden tours in my Edible Garden in Malvik (the rain stopped both days just before we started), a walk and talk in the community garden at Væres Venner and a talk at Stammen Cafe & Bar in Trondheim on “Perennial Climate-friendly Food Plants for Urban Areas” talking about 15 advantages of growing perennials! Below you can see pictures from each of the events which were all well attended. I’ve credited the various photographers below. Thanks to all that came along!

1. Garden tour on Wednesday 27th September 

Making the Ø letter for Økouka (picture: Margaret Anderson)

2. Talk at Stammen 

Picture by Margaret Anderson
 

2. Garden tour on Sunday 1st October

Picture by Margaret Anderson

Pictures by Markus Tacker (click on the album pictures for more information):


Pictures by Marit By (click on the album pictures for more information)::

4. Walk and talk in the Væres Venner Community Garden
Pictures by Marit By (the World Garden looking good in its autumn colours with the backdrop of the old ash trees):


 

 

Celebration 40 genera salad

40 years ago this month I came to Norway to find a place for us to live as I was to start work at Institutt for kontinentalsokkelundersøkelser (IKU; Continental Shelf Institute) in Trondheim in October 1981. The flat I found was here in Malvik kommune (Torp). 
To celebrate 40 years in Malvik I made a salad with 40 different genera. The names of the genera are below the pictures!

The 40 genera:

  1. Begonia
  2. Anethum
  3. Salvia
  4. Lactuca
  5. Chrysanthemum
  6. Raphanus
  7. Apium
  8. Coriandrum
  9. Oxalis
  10. Tilia
  11. Tropaeolum
  12. Hablitzia
  13. Hosta
  14. Stellaria
  15. Alliaria
  16. Phyteuma
  17. Melissa
  18. Malva
  19. Lavatera
  20. Allium
  21. Lunaria
  22. Arabis
  23. Alchemilla
  24. Scorzonera
  25. Tragopogon
  26. Sanguisorba
  27. Campanula
  28. Primula
  29. Taraxacum
  30. Rumex
  31. Viola
  32. Lepidium
  33. Claytonia
  34. Ligularia
  35. Fragaria
  36. Osmorhiza
  37. Barbarea
  38. Hemerocallis
  39. Crambe
  40. Myrrhis

Alys meets the Modern Monk in the Edible Garden

10 years ago today I had my first celebrity visit, from the UK! On 10th April 2010 I received the following email message entitled Permaveggies:
“I am a garden writer based in Birmingham, England. I came across your work via an interview with you on a website and am very interested in learning more about your garden. I also share a love for unusual edibles that can be used in an ‘ornamental setting’. I suppose my garden has one foot in the forest garden camp and the other in a cottage garden. The greatest majority are edibles (everything from your typical vegetables to the more unusuals) with the rest being useful plants for medicine, feeding the garden or pollinators. I suppose the interesting part is that it’s a typical row terrace garden that’s about 60 ft long- cramped in is one way of looking at its design principles. I’ve written a book about it called the Edible Garden with it in conjunction with a programme on BBC2.
Anyhow I would love to talk more about your work and what you’ve discovered. I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely
Alys Fowler”
The interview was the one published on my friend Telsing Andrews’ blog, The Veggie Patch Reimagined (see https://veggiepatchreimagined.blogspot.com/2010/02/stephens-edimental-oasis-interview.html).
As part of this BBC series, permaculture had just been featured on 7th April 2010. The BBC crew visited Tim and Maddy Harland’s (my publishers) garden and were bowled over by their mature forest garden full of food and wildlife.
In my reply I jokingly wrote “Stop by next time you’re in the area”!
Little did I know that she would do just that a few months later! It turned out that she was researching her book “The Thrifty Forager” and was “looking for people to interview who boldly eat what others might not think to…”!
Alys’ book The Thrifty Forager was published the year after but my book with Introduction by Alys took another 3 years!
She devotes a whole section to my garden, its plants and The Modern Monk (guess who?) :) In the foreword to my book, there’s a picture of Alys reading my old coverless copy of Cornucopia II in the garden!
Below are 4 albums of pictures taken by Alys’ cameraman Brian Wheeler!

I have fond memories of this visit during a really hot period after the coldest June since the 1960s. The first album are pictures from the garden, the second from a forage and swim in the fjord, then a trip up to a local mountain Vennafjellet , via a second swimming spot, Nevrahølet (we were finished quite quickly with the pictures and interview in the garden due to the wonderful weather) and finally some pictures from Trondheim!
Alys was also a presenter on BBC’s Gardener’s World and writes a gardening column for the Guardian!

Other blog posts about Alys!
Alys Fowler in the Edible Garden:
https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=276
Alys’ Pool: https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=5572

1. Brian Wheeler’s photographs of The Edible Garden

2. Brian Wheeler’s photographs from a tour of the bay and beach below the house (after her swim, Alys said for the first time that I lived in paradise!)

3. Trip to Vennafjellet via Nevrahølet swimming hole in the eyes of Brian Wheeler

4. Alys Fowler in Trondheim (by Brian Wheeler)




 

The Allium garden at Ringve

19th June 2020: Video update from the Allium (Chicago) garden at the NTNU Ringve Botanical Gardens in Trondheim. The heat wave has brought many species into flower and the garden’s looking great! 
The official opening of the garden, planned for August, has been postponed to 2021. We are working on plant signs which will hopefully be added later in the summer.
The garden currently contains some 300 accessions including around 100 Allium species and many old Norwegian onions collected over several years from all over the country and funded by Norsk Genressurssenteret and Landbruksdirektoratet.
The signs for the garden are in part funded through a gift from Skjærgaarden (https://www.skjaergaarden.no) to KVANN (Norwegian Seed Savers) who have decided to use the gift at Ringve (see https://www.facebook.com/skjaergaarden.no/videos/2972781459487864)

KVANN treff Day 1 at Væres Venner and Presthus Gård

The first evening of KVANN (Norwegian Seed Savers) weekend event in Trondheim and Malvik, we visited KVANN’s first “nyttevekstreservat” (inspired by Lawrence Hills’ proposal for vegetable sanctuaries across Europe as a reaction to the loss of our vegetable diverity in 1979!) at Væres Venner Felleshage (a new communiy garden in Trondheim). KVANN have already started work on a Verdenshage (World Garden) and another area currently being used as a holding bed for a future diversity garden, including walnut, hazel, sea buckthorn and other fruit trees to be planted elsewhere..
Afterwards, Sølvi Kvam took us to nearby Presthus Gård, a farm which has until recently been threatened by nearby housing developments. It will now be developed with many activities and KVANN are also welcome to make suggestions!
 
See also

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!

Verdenshage and Væres Venner

It was the first time I cycled to my office at the Ringve Botanical Garden today and I took the opportunity to see how the new Væres Venner community garden was looking (starting this year east of Ranheim at Være) . The snow had gone! At the entrance to the garden (Væres Venner) we will plant our World Edible Garden (Verdenshage) – large circular bed with the centre representing the north pole and mainly edible perennials distributed according to where they grow or are used in the Northern Hemisphere (see the first video below, where you can see an inner circle where we planted temporarily some 60 different plants in the autumn…and some are still ALIVE)!!
We have also purchased a couple of hardy walnuts and various hazel cultivars which will be planted along with many other fruit and berry bushes! I’m helping to design and develop the garden with a great group of enthusiasts and I hope that it will be formally adopted as one of KVANNs Vegetable Sanctuaries (KVANN=Norwegian Seed Savers)

Hablitzia tamnoides (Caucasus!) has survived!

Moon garden?

Opening of the new Trondheim Herbarium TRH

It seems as though it’s a good life being a botanist. It was my second day at work today and it ended at 2:30 in the afternoon with bubbly and double helix clipping ;)
Accessions go back as far as Bishop Gunnerus in the 1760s.
See also this video interview with Tommy Prestø:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkSsx-du3xso


Annual meeting of Norwegian Permaculture Association in Trondheim

Pictures from the Norwegian Permaculture Association’s Annual Meeting in Trondheim in June 2011 including design of the new Permabed at Svartlamoen and visit to the Edible Garden in Malvik!