For the love of weeds
Words–
Nat Woods
@nat.woods_
Photos–
Alana Potts
@alanapotts
Muse–
Kobi
@wilderway
Location–
96 Bangalow
@96bangalow
Originally published in Paradiso Issue 11
Apart from the occasional time that my mum would coax us kids into helping her weed the garden, I can’t say that I’ve ever really given much thought to weeds. They were a pest in my mind — I would drive past a clump of Lantana and shake my head at this invasive species ‘taking over’ the land. My dear friend, Kobi, the head gardener and weed lover at 96 Bangalow, a local regenerative agriculture project, has completely transformed my understanding of weeds and the land in general. Her Wilder Garden at 96 Bangalow is a magical forest of edible foods which I love hanging out in.
Beautiful Kobi, tell us how you came to be a gardener at 96 Bangalow?
The beginning of the story is that my mother is a permaculturalist, and she did her study when I was very young. She was a horticulturalist first, and that was her job when I was growing up. So I was observing her, she was taking me to college with her, and then taking me to work with her when she was doing peoples’ gardens where she would be landscaping and growing food for them. We were also foraging from a really young age — I got a bit of an eagle eye on me for looking out for roadside food and she would also pull over if I observed something.
So it built from there. I’ve always had a few pot plants since I was really young. And we always had food growing in the garden.
So 96 came about because I was doing some work with Peter Hardwick with Harvest Restaurant in Newrybar — I was an apprentice of him. Peter is an amazing forager and mad scientist who has worked with indigenous communities around Australia and has foraged most of his life — he’s just an incredible plant scientist and has been doing some amazing experiments with fermentation. And we were going out and finding lots of native foods and weeds and using them to inspire the chefs and put them on the menu. And get people excited to solve a problem which he’s passionate about and I’m passionate about.
And what problem is that?
The problem of, generally, what I believe is just a disconnection from nature. A human disconnection from nature. And the problem expresses itself in that we harm the land and the environment around us, in many many ways. You know, the bigger picture that everyone is aware of — the fact that things are falling apart around us — that disconnection is so so gradually happening that we might not even notice how it’s happening in our own lives. But the simple action of going outside and learning about the plants around us, and just stopping and being present, being in our senses, smelling, touching, hearing the sounds around us, tasting things, new things, it just instantly reconnects us to that sense of wonder and oneness. Yeah it’s beautiful. Its magic. Obviously there are lots of chemical reasons to be out in nature but all of the reasons just bring us more in touch with the fact that what we see around us in nature, is actually part of us and crucial to our survival.
Yeah, I think about this a lot. We are so aware of the impacts of what animals would feel if we kept them in a concrete cage, away from their natural habitats. But we don’t connect that to how we feel if we’re stuck in a concrete cage or concrete environment, and we forget that we’re just animals too, and we need that natural planet too. It’s like because we have this higher thinking, that we don’t need that connection.
Like we’re evolving beyond it or something?! It’s totally not true. We can’t evolve that fast. We can’t evolve past the fact that we are absolutely influenced by the environment around us. We’re so influenced by the structures around us — the feeling of the things that we walk on and touch and see.
A lot of the responses to climate change is about ‘how can science get us out of this?’, but your response seems much more grassroots than that. How does your work play into the greater scheme of the planet and what we’re facing right now?
Hmm great question. I fall into these panic states, asking myself what can I do to have the biggest impact and be the most efficient expression of my energy towards fixing the problem of climate change and planetary disaster that we’re creating. And over years and years of freaking out about it, I came back to this fact that essential disconnection — as within, so without — we really are what we eat. And being able to draw our likeness between plants and animals and the life around us, I feel is one of the more important things that has brought me into a space of, I dunno, I feel like that’s where such huge change can happen. Because when people see how important the environment is to them, it almost becomes like family, it becomes like your child or your lover or your parent and you take care of it in a completely different way. It becomes more instinctual, more animal, more ferocious ... it’s more of a force rather than a thought process.
And so you know, even starting with food production, I’m a huge advocate for foraging for edible and medicinal weeds — which are basically plants that we believe aren’t in the right place. But weeds are in the right place, we just don’t generally understand it.
“But the simple action of going outside ... it just instantly reconnects us to that sense of wonder and oneness.”
Explain that. Because we see weeds as these things that we have to ‘weed out’ and remove from our gardens.
Yeah. Weeds are essentially just a bandaid — weeds appear when we come along and stuff things up, when we neuter the ground and take away the root systems, the shade, and the protection of the soil. The soil is a living organism, it has microbes and fungi and all kinds of amazing ecosystems below our feet and below the surface and they need protection from the elements, the heat, and to be able to survive in the anaerobic environment, so certain microbes can move and breathe, all of these things are so important, but when humans came along we’ve taken away all that protection. We’ve put hard-hooved animals on the land, and we’ve done lots and lots of clearing that has exposed the land — it’s like tearing our skin off and exposing our skin to the elements. So nature’s response to that is to spring up these amazing pioneering species that are super hardy and do this amazing job of proliferating and spreading everywhere. They grow really fast — we can think of lantana, different types of grasses, camphor laurel — and basically those plants come along to try to hold the soil together, to try to make those pathways for water and nutrients to move, to try and continue to mine the minerals from deep in the earth and bring them to the surface so new life can start on the surface. And in certain areas, if there’s really low sunlight, or lots of sunlight, specific seeds will germinate, and specific seeds will be able to tolerate those environments. Some incredible weeds have really deep roots and those deep roots are there to de-compact the soil in really compacted spaces, and other ones are like replacing phosphorus that has disappeared from that topsoil, or other ones have really hair netty root systems that hold the top soil together so it doesn’t all erode. They’re the heroes of the plant world! They’re coming along to do the dirty work after we’ve stuffed things up.
Wow.
Totally wow! How crazy is it that we go along and rip them up?!
I mean I love humans, don’t get me wrong. It’s really a case of naïveté and disconnection. My biggest joy is speaking about this at the moment because I think so few people are unaware of what’s happening, and you can’t blame people when they don’t know the truth.
Let’s talk about the example of Lantana then, what is it doing and how do we then regenerate land where lantana is?
Lantana is doing a similar thing, its covering bare land, and it has gotten to a point where its spread into the forest. There should be, in a forest ecosystem, a number of layers of growth. Lantana has come through and has replaced a couple of those different storeys — the lower storeys which should be there but have been neglected and stripped from our forests in a lot of places. Especially where Camphor Laurel shows up, they don’t allow a lot of things beneath them, but Lantana is one of those plants that can come along and grow there. Lantana can conquer that and move in and move across land — its protecting the land. If you ever pull back a clump of lantana and look at the soil beneath it, it is often so rich and so full of life and fungi and beautiful ecosystems. It’s giving the soil an opportunity to breathe and regenerate and get ready for the next thing.
So what would you do if you had to remove a patch of lantana?
It needs to be worked with little by little. For anyone wanting to regenerate land. It needs to be done in increments. And when you clear something, you need to understand that the first instinct of nature is to cover up that bare space, which is so imperative for the soil — the bare skin, the flesh of the earth — so you need to create a forest like environment, if you can bring mulch in, if you can bring in leaf litter, do a little bit and plant some trees and seedlings in that space, and then come back through and take out any of the weed seedlings that come back through. It’s a slow process in natural way. The use of glyphosate in bush regeneration is actually killing quite a number of seeds that have been sitting dormant in the earth for so long, waiting for the right opportunity to spring up. They just need the opportunity and the right circumstances to grow themselves.
It takes time and energy and that takes an investment that a lot of people aren’t willing to make because they don’t have the connection to the land or the understanding of what’s needed.
So tell us about edible weeds.
Obviously the number one thing about foraging for food in the wild is to be absolutely 100 percent sure that you’re identifying the right thing — which means consulting with someone who’s an expert or has the experience, or having a really good guide book, or a really great resource online. Safety is the number one priority, I always have to say that, because we do have quite a few really toxic plants in Australia. But I explain to my students, that weeds are literally like the street fighters of the plant food world — they’re so badass! They’ve survived in environments where we haven’t nourished them or given them the perfect garden beds with food and sun, they have battled the elements and all kinds of things, and have survived, and when you ingest something that is a survivor and lives in that way, that has had to create an immune system to survive those harsh realities, you are ingesting the immune system of that plant and it is directly affecting your digestive system.
So in general wild food is often so much more nutritious than any cultivated food that we could possibly eat, and that’s clear because a lot of the cultivated food we eat — lettuces, kale, brassicas, broccoli, and things like that, even carrots — they are just hybridised versions of these plants that we consider weeds that we have slowly bred into a sweeter, plumper, juicier versions of themselves to appeal to us. So those original versions are super jam-packed and incredibly full of goodness and often taste that way as well, so they have a really strong flavour, fair bit stronger than their hybridised distant cousins.
And if we’re thinking of ourselves as a species within a habitat, then we’re under the same pressures that those weeds are under too, so if they can fight it, and we ingest that, then we’re going to fair better in that habitat.
Definitely. I think a term we could use to describe that is the ‘adaptogenic’ function of the foods that we eat — certain herbs have a special amount of nutrients and chemicals that help us adapt to our environment, adapt to stresses, help our adrenals, help our blood circulation, all kinds of amazing functions. And weeds have so often got so much more of that capacity than regular foods — they’re more medicinal in that way.
So what is your big hope and dream? If Kobi could transform the world what would it look like?
Cool question. We’d stop poisoning the earth.
Start trying to live more in harmony with the earth. I think one really easy beginning would be decentralising food systems — people growing more food at home. The food system has to change in order for that to change. There are ways of managing plants and animals that we eat that are healthy for the soil and for the environment. But it’s all figure-outable! Let’s keep doing a bit of research, finding different ways and eating weeds so we get a little smarter!
Wilder Garden Foraging Guide
1. Bracken Fern (Pteridium aquilinum)
Edibility: not advised, only with extensive preparation to process toxins.
Uses: Crush young fiddleheads onto insect bites and stings for relief. Crush onto fungal infections. Use large leaves for animal bedding, veggie garden/plant mulch. Dry leaves burn well as biofuel.
2. Plantain leaf (Plantago lanceolata)
Edibility: use leaves fresh in salad, cooked, in tea. Flavour: crisp, mildly bitter, mushroomy notes.
Uses: Spit poultice of leaves onto insect bites and stings for soothing relief. Apply as poultice to quickly heal cuts, sores, minor skin infections. Eat for gut health. Tea for coughs and respiratory infection.
3. Sow Thistle (Sonchus oleraceus)
Edibility: use leaves and stems fresh in salad, cooked, as tea. Flavour: refreshing, green, slightly bitter.
Uses: Eat to treat infections, general inflammation, to support liver health, to regulate menstruation, purify blood, and as a general tonic and antioxidant. Apply sap latex for wart removal. Leaf poultice reduces inflammation and swelling.
4. Gotu Kola (Centella asiatica)
Vascular health, skin inflammation.
Aphrodisiac and reproductive tonifier.
5. Dandelion (Taraxacum vulgare)
Edibility: use leaves fresh in salad, cooked, as tea, use roots fresh, dried or roasted as tea, eat flowers or ferment into wine. Flavour: fairly bitter, astringent, drying, cooling.
Uses: Eat leaves as a prebiotic, digestive tonic, antioxidant, multi vitamin and mineral supplement, anti-inflammatory. Regulates blood sugar and pressure, cholesterol, improves metabolism and immunity, calms heat and irritation. Drink tea or eat fresh leaves as urinary tract and kidney tonic and to expel excess fluid retention and fatty liver issues. Regulates hormones and stimulates mothers lactation.
6. Yellow Dock (Rumex crispus)
Edibility: young leaves eaten raw in moderation, or cooked. Flavour: crisp stems and young leaves with slightly sour and astringent rhubarb flavor.
Uses: Eat for liver health, assists in treating parasitic, bacterial or fungal infections. Purifies blood, is rich in vitamins and minerals, anti-inflammatory, eaten to soothe pain and swelling in the respiratory tract.
Eaten or applied to assist relief of psoriasis, dermatitis, rashes, swelling, bleeding, itching and stings.
Edibility: use leaves and stems fresh in salad, cooked, as tea. Flavour: bitter, astringent, slightly sweet, buttery aftertaste, cooling.
Uses: Enhances cognitive function, memory and concentration, prevention of alzeimers. Improves eyesight, circulation,
