Foraging: Summer Celebration

Join Johanna Knox, author of "A Forager’s Treasury" and "Guardians of Aotearoa" and look more closely at the weeds and common plants that grow wild during the warmer months and discover new and exciting uses for them.

Discover the myriad uses of the weeds and common plants that thrive in Wellington during spring and summer. We’ll talk about identifying the safe, useful ones, as well as observing your environment and harvesting sustainably.

With an experienced forager, you’ll find out how to take basic pantry ingredients and add wild-harvested plants to make cheap, nutritious snacks, salads, spreads and party food - as well as preserved foods and simple healthcare preparations - especially for dealing with those pesky summer biting insects. You'll even learn simple techniques for solar cooking - aka harvesting free energy.

You'll come away with a repertoire of ‘blueprint’ recipes that you will be able to use and adapt to your own situation.

By the end of the course, you’ll be able to:

- Recognise at least ten common weeds, trees or other plants that grow around you.
- Make a range of simple, refreshing chilled drinks from foraged plants.
- Prepare a spread for a social event featuring foraged plants.
- Apply the principles of preserving in sugar, oil and vinegar to plants you forage.
- Create a simple solar cooker from repurposed materials and use it effectively.
- Make two to three basic healthcare/bodycare preparations from plants you forage.
- Discuss the relationship of native plants to weeds and practise ethical harvesting.

Note: This is a classroom-based course, where all the plants used will be foraged in advance by the tutor and brought in. While all recipes will be vegan and gluten free, we'll discuss how to adapt them to other ingredients. Although there will be a tiny bit of overlap e.g. around safe, sustainable practices, the content will mostly be different from the winter foraging course.

You're welcome to bring something foraged from your garden or neighbourhood to talk about at the start of the workshop. Feel free to bring notebook and pen as well as a phone or camera to photograph plants for future reference.