'Garden Foraging' Back to the Nature: From a talk event of the Book Festival

'Garden Foraging', it was very tempting to me.  It was the title of today's talk event of the Book Festival of our town.

The guest speakers were the author of 'The Garden Forager', Adele Nozedar, and a local artist and illustrator, Diana Mead.

I have one of Nozedar's book, 'The Hedgerow Handbook', which is one of my favourite plant books, from which I have often cited in this blog.  I was looking forward to this event.

Yes, as expected, I (I suppose, everyone at the event as well) enjoyed it very much.

They brought an apple and a few branches of Himalayan honeysuckle from Diana Mead's garden.  Nozedar said that about 90% of garden plants on the market (of the UK) were edible, even though it says 'not edible' (because of the marketing of traders).

Thinking about plants generally, it's difficult to distinguish between wild an cultivated ones.  cultivated plants nowadays were, of course, cultivated from wild species.  And vice versa, like Himalayan balsam and Japanese knotweed, both of which are edible and tasteful, they are categorised under unpleasant name, 'invasive plants'.

One of the audience questioned about the bitter taste of many of wild plants.  Nozedar said the bitterness of those wild plants have been eliminated through cultivation to suite our (consumers') favour, but the component of the bitter taste has good effect on immune system and so on.  We tend to prefer perfectly proportional spotless but less tasted fruits and vegetables from supermarkets.

She also told (in response to another question) that children in the two generation before (which means, grandparents as children) consumes much less sugar than children today.

I recall articles, many years ago, somewhere in a Japanese newspaper, that someone tried making dishes what the Tea Ceremony master or guru in the 16th century, Sen no Rikyu in those days.  Unsurprisingly the tasters felt the dishes tasteless, which was meant to be little salted and spiced.  

Our sense of taste (generally including other senses, actually) has been gradually weakened over the centuries.  

Why not use those plants as healthy diet source and get our ancient sense back?

This is Himalayan honeysuckle in our garden.  To be honest, I didn't know its name.  Nozedar said it tasted like bitter sweet chocolate.  After back home, I picked one of the berries and tasted it.  Indeed!  (An audience asked her if the leaves were also edible, and she immediately put a leave in her mouth!  So, recommended young leaves rather than old autumnal leaves.)

And, fuchsia in our garden as well.  The flower are also edible despite the vivid neon colour.

In the end, I bought another foraging book of Nozedar, 'The Garden Forager'.