Hedgerow

I am frequently told that going on a walk with me can be rather disconcerting. Except for the occasions when I offer my companion the odd leaf to chew upon, I appear to be strangely distracted and barely listening to what is being said to me. Well, I am – usually – listening; it is just that I am doing something else as well – looking.

Once one learns the foraging way of life, it is difficult to stop. Every walk, every car or train journey is an opportunity to find a new patch of Watermint, a likely spot for Pignuts or a promising-looking wood. If my walking is absent-minded, my driving is lethal. Foraging at 50mph, with eyes darting left and right and the occasional abrupt punctuations of the forager’s emergency stop, has made me a danger to all road-users.

I hope that you come to love foraging and learning about foraging as much as I do. I know for certain that you will enjoy the food you find on your travels – eating wild Raspberries on a summer evening, for example, is difficult to beat. While many of the foods here are wild versions of familiar plants, there are several which may be new to you. Pignuts, Brooklime, Bulrush shoots and Silverweed roots are not readily found at even the best of greengrocers and are delicacies available only to the forager. Of course, there was a time when life was quite different, a time when there were no shops, no farms to supply them and not even a garden.

Ten or eleven thousand years ago in the Near East, not far from the mythical Garden of Eden, human beings made their greatest ever innovation: agriculture. For all the aeons before this, there was only one way our ancestors could obtain food – from the wild. Agriculture has been the backbone of our civilisation, relieving us of the time-consuming and unreliable daily hunt for food, but it has also deprived us of one of life’s great pleasures.

While gathering wild food is still a matter of everyday life in many rural parts of the developed world (though much less so in Britain), nowadays the culture of hunting and foraging persists for most people largely as a pale remnant. Hunting has become a formalised and often ritualised sport; the true purpose, acquiring food, frequently forgotten. And few people now will forage for much more than a basket of Blackberries or a bag of Elderflowers. But, of course, instincts do not disappear just because we do not need them as we once did. Most of us now sublimate our foraging urges in supermarket aisles, which have been cunningly designed by Machiavellian retail psychologists to mimic the ancient experience.

Given that finding one’s own food is such a fundamental drive, it is unsurprising that it is so much fun – nature has a delightful tendency to reward us for doing things that are essential for life but which are hard work, complex or even absurd. I take people out every year on various forays and it is wonderful to see their primal delight; all other concerns and thoughts flee and the single-minded nature of the enterprise becomes almost meditative.

With the need to find food in the wild no longer pressing, and most people living in an urban environment, the knowledge of what can be eaten, and where and when to find it, is no longer learned at a mother’s side. Books can tell you the ‘what’ and to a large extent the ‘when’, but the ‘where’ cannot be described beyond generalities. The precise location of particular plants was knowledge passed down through the generations; Pignuts are always found here and there is a plum tree here, here and here, with the second one producing the best fruit. Such things now have to be learned anew. I have a mental map of exactly where hundreds of different wild foods can be found and a sense of my chances on any particular day, but this is hard-earned knowledge acquired from years of searching – if my mother knew where to find Pignuts she has kept the information to herself.

This book won’t tell you exactly where to find Pignuts either, but I hope it will fill in some of the gaps and point you more or less in the right direction. As your life no longer depends on knowing where to find wild food, you have the leisure to enjoy the search, with every new discovery an exciting one. Coming across an unsuspected woodland clearing full of ripe Raspberries or a Chestnut tree producing good-sized nuts is a wonderful experience.

There is so much to enjoy here and I hope you will become the hunter/gatherer you were designed to be.

The title of this book is ‘Hedgerow’ but it actually covers plants found in many more places than this. Wood, mountainside, moor, bog, heath, stream, meadow, field edge, seashore, urban wasteland, garden and allotment can all produce an abundance of wild foods. Most people can make a good start by looking in their own flower-beds – Hairy Bittercress, Dandelion, Ground Elder, Silverweed and Corn Salad can all be found in the average flower garden and it is rather satisfying to be able to eat your weeds. The vegetable garden can supply even finer delicacies, such as Fat Hen and Spear-leaved Orache.

One of my favourite spots for foraging is other people’s veg patches and I am something of a familiar figure at the local allotments. There was some suspicion at first from the gardeners, but when my requests to pick some of their weeds proved not to be a cover for theft or sabotage, I was welcomed as a harmless idiot. In fact, few places are more packed with wild edible greens than the disturbed ground of an allotment garden – with Fat Hen, Spear-leaved Orache, Red Goosefoot and Chickweed available by the sackful. You may not be quite so lucky as I am – some allotments have fallen under the firm hand of an officious parish clerk or allotment association and will be scrupulously weed free. Also, the organic revolution has not touched the hearts and souls of all who practise horticulture, so the patch of Fat Hen you have been eyeing up for the last week may have recently been sprayed with 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid or something equally unappetising. Always check with your friendly gardener first.

Even without the wildlife refuge of many gardens, the urban forager need not feel left out. Around twenty species mentioned in this book are commonly found in odd corners of our cities and suburbs. Fennel, Perennial Wall Rocket, Rowan, Blackberry, Stinging Nettle, Wild Strawberry and others are all as much, or even more, at home in town as out. Not that urban foraging is without its perils. Herbicidal sprays, pollution and, most of all, dogs, can make a forage around town a dicey business. There is good news though: pollution from motor vehicles is not what it was when lead was an ingredient in petrol. All that lead has now been washed away and is, mercifully, not being replenished. Other fuel and exhaust residues such as oil and carbon particles do not travel far from the road and will be no problem unless you pick your plants very close to the traffic. It is usually perfectly obvious whether a plant is growing in acceptably clean conditions so just use your common sense.

The countryside too has its pitfalls. Roadside pollution can still be a menace, though usually less so than in town. Problems from agricultural sprays are a rare concern but you should still be careful when picking from the edge of crop fields. Cars on the move can be a nuisance and I often find myself squeezing into a prickly hedge when two cars perversely choose that particular spot to pass one another. Probably the worst problem, though not dangerous unless you happen to be in the hedge at the time, is hedge-trimming. This operation is essential – left untrimmed, hedges would cease to be hedges and attempt to join the other side of the road to make a long wood. Despite efforts by councils and farmers to cut at the right time of year (usually to accommodate nesting birds), they often seem to do so at the wrong time for the forager. Promising Redcurrant bushes, Gooseberry bushes and Hazel trees are devastated in seconds by the voracious blades of these vertical lawn mowers. In any new world order, I will have the whole process placed under my personal control. Nevertheless, we can often be lucky and find a crop that has managed to escape. My favourite hedgerow harvest – the relatively tall Elderflower – normally evades the hedge-trimmers.

Woodland edges are seldom trimmed and will often contain many edible species. The modern version of the planted hedgerow is the swathes of trees and shrubs planted by imaginative council and highway authorities along dual carriageways and even on roundabouts. My best spot for Wild Cherries is on a bypass (I won’t tell you which) and the largest patch of Sea Buckthorn I have ever come across is alongside the A1 just south of Newcastle. Sometimes these places are accessible, but often they are a forage too far.

The heart of a wood is surprisingly poor foraging territory; it is generally too dark and fails to provide the ‘edge habitat’ required by so many plants. Wood Sorrel and Sweet Chestnut are the most likely woodland finds. Heath and bog bring Bilberry and Cranberry respectively, while streams will supply two of my favourite edible plants – Watercress and Watermint. Fields and meadows are also excellent hunting grounds with Pignut, Sorrel, Wintercress and Dandelion.

I have included a few of the plants that can be found at the seaside though you’ll find them explored more thoroughly in my Edible Seashore handbook. I repeat them here either because they are particularly tasty or because they also occur inland.

Foraging for plants requires very little in the way of equipment, but a certain amount of preparation will make it a great deal easier – and safer. I have waded out into a chalk stream to pick Watercress in bare feet on several occasions, having forgotten my wellies. You can do it, but it is not fun – the water temperature feels about zero even in July. Feet are not the only parts endangered – with so many berry trees armed with spines and thorns, thick gloves and robust clothing are often an absolute necessity. I also highly recommend a hat as this will shade your eyes, protect your head, keep you dry, and double as an emergency foraging basket.

A collection of real baskets, buckets, small pots with lids and canvas bags will bring your finds home intact and, if you take enough, not hopelessly mixed together. A knife is an important part of the forager’s kit, but there is now a serious obstacle to this innocent necessity. Carrying a knife in a public place with a blade longer than 75mm, or any knife with a fixed blade or a blade that can be locked in position (many penknives are like this), is a criminal offence with up to four years available to catch up on your reading. It is, however, fine if you have ‘lawful excuse’ – a carpenter on his way to a site job or a fisherman off to the seaside would have a good reason to carry a fixed blade, but the wild food hunter may have a harder time convincing a suspicious member of the constabulary of his innocent intentions. Of course, if you popped into the bank while on your way to your favourite Wild Garlic spot with a bowie knife tucked down your trousers you would be asking for trouble. Scissors are indispensable and I never go anywhere without a pair, even to the bank, but even these could conceivably be misconstrued as a fixed blade. A spade will be necessary for unearthing Horseradish and other roots, though how you are going to explain one of those I do not know.

Forager’s kit: boxwood berry-picker, knife, scissors, drainpipe picker and stick with crooked end

Berry-pickers are the love-child of a comb and a dustpan. They can speed up the picking of Bilberries, though, by the time you have removed all the twigs and leaves in your collection, not as much as you might hope. You can either spend a day and a half handcrafting one in finest boxwood like I did, or buy a perfectly serviceable plastic and wire one from a specialist supplier for under a tenner. Much more useful, though this time you will have to make it yourself, is a plum/apple/hazelnut/cherry picker fashioned from a 40mm plastic waste pipe. The fruit rolls magically down the tube into your hand or even into a bag secured at the bottom. The prongs are made by cutting and shaping the pipe into a fork, then carefully bending them by warming the plastic over a gas flame. The last bit is fraught with danger but if you keep the pipe at least 15cm above the flame you shouldn’t burn yourself too badly.

A sturdy stick with a crooked end for pulling fruit- and nut-bearing branches within your grasp – and for waving at rival foragers in a threatening manner – is de rigueur.

There is one potential hazard in using these implements, or at least carrying them around in a public place – the innocent forager may be open to the accusation of ‘going equipped’. Such a situation might arise, for example, if you walked past a cherry orchard on your way to pick some hedgerow plums while carrying your trusty drainpipe picker over your shoulder. This sounds, and is, ridiculous, but the penalty is up to three years inside and the police and courts do not always pursue the path of good sense.

Finally, a little-used hedgerow foraging technique that is my gift to you is the ‘standing on the roof of your car’ method. This is seriously effective – I once picked many kilos of plums from a tree whose lower branches had been stripped bare by less adventurous collectors. A proud moment.

Wild food can be found at any time of the year – even January – but the warmer months are always best. Spring will bring succulent new growth and Hawthorn blossoms, and summer has its Strawberries and Redcurrants, but if I were to choose the best time of all, it would be early September. Many summer fruits are still around and the autumn ones just beginning, roots are plump and green vegetables such as Watercress and Fat Hen still in leaf.

For each species I have indicated when they are most likely to appear. This is summarised in the Forager’s Calendar. The dates given are inevitably approximate as they can vary by a few weeks with the weather, which in turn will be influenced by geographical location. ‘May’ blossom from the Hawthorn, for example, is so called because of the time of its appearance, but it can often be found in June.

Seasons vary greatly from year to year so this is a rough and ready guide to the best times to look. Some plants have more than one crop and this is noted on the chart. The low season (shaded pale green) is when a plant may sometimes be found but is not necessarily at its best or so easy to find.