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An urban forage around Lockleaze
It’s a warm Tuesday morning standing outside the Vench Adventure playground in Lockleaze. The blossom is beginning to appear on the trees, and arrays of daffodils brighten the grass verges; a sure sign that spring is well and truly on its way.
But we’re not here for the playground today. In fact, we’re here to go on a shopping spree, with no supermarket in sight.
Laden with backpack, beanie hat and a basket, Steve England, a local horticulturalist who leads foraging and wildlife courses across Bristol, is more than eager to start sharing his wealth of knowledge and demonstrate the wild foods around the streets of Lockleaze.
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“If you just know where to look, you’ll realise you’re in a supermarket with no walls,” he chirps, giving the robin in the cherry tree a run for his money.
“Cherry trees are all around us in Lockleaze,” he begins. “All cherries are edible, they’re a wonderful source of free food that appears around July time, if you can get there before the pigeons that is.”
The common Cherry tree found in many gardens and verges across Bristol provides a great source of food and can be easily identified by its bark – photo: Emily Shimell
The foraging route has been planned. From the Vench to the Hub, down to the Car Wash Coffee Shop, across to the Lockleaze Sports Centre and back up to where we began.
“We’re not touching Stoke Park today, we’re going to explore our housing estate and see what we can find amongst the concrete,” says Steve as he quickly points to an Elder tree reaching out from the hedgerow.
“Have you ever made elderflower cordial, elderflower fritters? You can make a lovely elderberry wine or add the fruit to muffins.
“When identifying foods, it’s not just what the plant looks like. It’s how it smells, how it feels. You’ve got to use all your senses,” Steve advises.
“There are many plants that can kill you, others that can make you rather sick. That’s one of the things that makes it so exciting for me.”
“Nature is everything. It brings me joy, being outdoors calms me, it helps me focus,” says Steve – photo: Emily Shimell
There is such excitement that pours from our foraging lead, who himself has grown up in the streets of Lockleaze, but claims to have had a different outlook to many of his friends when he was younger.
“Lockleaze kids weren’t thought to be the type to enjoy nature. But nature is everything. It brings me joy, being outdoors calms me, it helps me focus,” he says.
As Steve bounds towards what most of us would call a weed, a glint in his eye suggests he sees this plant as something rather different.
“You can look at these roads with one mindset. You can see crumbling concrete roads, some run down buildings, some rather unkept spaces. Or you can look closer and see much more. Remember, nature doesn’t do tidy,” he adds, as he excitedly plucks a leaf of Pennywort from a wall.
Steve explains that Pennywort is a lovely addition to a salad, and you can recognise them by their round, scallop shaped succulent leaves with a belly button in the middle.
“Just take a few leaves, and if there’s not much growing then it’s best to leave it and find a more abundant patch,” he tells Bristol24/7, explaining that conservation should be a top priority for any forager.
“Many people have got into foraging in the past few years and so it’s vital we work together to ensure we don’t decimate any areas, that we leave new shoots to grow and make sure we forage sustainably.”
He adds that when urban foraging, it’s also extremely important to assess the position of the plant too.
“You don’t want to eat a plant from next to a lamppost for example. There’s a lot of dog walkers around here, that wild cabbage there wouldn’t be too pleasant,” he says, pointing to a green-purple leafy weed poking through the pavement whilst shuffling less than a metre forwards from the last edible find.
Steve says conservation should be a top priority for any forager, and that we should make sure we forage sustainably, alongside assessing the position of the plant alongside its identification – photo: Emily Shimell
Continuing along 1950’s-flat-roof-home-lined Romney Avenue, less than 50 metres from where we began, we come across a garden brimming with Grape Hyacinth, albeit not a true member of the hyacinth family, despite its name.
“This one is seen as a nuisance to many gardeners, but it can be very tasty if used right,” Steve says. “It’s actually a member of the onion family. The flowers can be bitter, but the purple flower clusters can be a beautiful garnish for many dishes. Maybe you could make flower ice cream from it too.”
Two gardens along and Steve points out the abundance of wild onions growing. “I was here yesterday and a lady was doing some weeding. I told her those plants she was pulling out was actually wild chives, and I persuaded her to try one. She’s realised she’s got a garden full of them, so she’s left them now and hopefully will start to make use of them.”
As we slowly amble along our route, Steve points out plant after plant, tree after tree that had culinary and sometimes medicinal benefits.
“Valarian, thistles, nettles, chickweed, plantain, cress, there’s all here,” he says.
You can eat rose petals, in fact all roses are edible and many of them are good too. They look great on a desert, in a salad or as a garnish, or you can just eat them straight from the bush.”
After realising I could still see where we met over an hour ago, it soon dawned on me that the original route could in fact be ten separate foraging walks with Steve; with so many edibles in just this short stretch, even reaching the Hub was going to be a challenge.
“There’s so much food at our finger tips, in our gardens, in the cracks in the walls,” Steve excitedly reminded me.
“You can easily forage a tasty salad and find some wonderful accompaniments to your meals, and you can do it in the outdoors, in your own time and your own space,” he adds. “Learn the basics and it opens your eyes to a whole new world around you.”
Wild Cress is amongst many of the plants that gardeners pull up as weeds, says Steve England – photo: Steve England
With a taste of wild mustard lingering on the palate, darker clouds begin to move in ominously and we decide to call it a day.
“All I have ever wanted to do is be in the outdoors, learn about nature and share what I know with others. I’m so pleased to be able to share all of this with you,” Steve says, as he passes me the contents of the basket and sends me on my way to prepare my lunch.
As he skips on into Stoke Park with a freshly emptied basket to begin his next foraging adventure, I wander back to to Vench, recalling the enthusiasm for each of the plants I now could recognise. I leave with an excitement to join Steve once again for the next leg of our route, some time in the near future.
Emily Shimell is reporting on Lockleaze as part of Bristol24/7’s community reporter scheme, a project which aims to tell stories from areas of Bristol traditionally under-served by the mainstream media.
Main photo: Emily Shimell
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