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Wow, what a wonderful event on Sunday 19th Nov! Our first fundraiser went really well and all thanks to the ‘Extreme Salad Man’ Stephen Barstow. His wonderful talk was rooted in Hampshire, dedicated to his late father Harold Barstow (keen grower), his late cousin Chris Currie (Garden Archaeologist) and to his Mum ‘Edimental Queen’ who attended the event. It was a roaring success with over 80 attendees both local and from further afield including an edibles nursery, Lincolnshire, RHS Wisley in Surrey, and Bristol. The room was buzzing with chatter about perma-vegetables and edimentals!
Stephen reminded us that eating perennial edibles is not a new thing, highlighting Hampshire’s history of growing Sea Kale Crambe maritima, now served in gourmet kitchens and watercress Nasturtium officianale, still ‘growing’ strong especially around Alresford. He then took us on an exciting trip around the world where we were introduced to some familiar ornamentals that are surprisingly edible including hostas, daylilies and many unfamiliar plants.
We can learn so much from the conditions these plants grow in in other climates and how local cultures cultivate, harvest and cook with them. Stephen’s own forest garden in Norway has challenging growing conditions, thin soils and extreme winters - Stephen showed us that if you choose the right plants resilient and adaptable to the local and changing climate we can feed ourselves more nutritious and lower maintenance food.
People left inspired to try some of the edimentals already growing in their gardens but also excited to try growing Stephen’s perma-vegetable seeds which he kindly donated to Wild Hive. We can all aspire to the Barstow diet of 80 a day and have a go at creating ‘Diversity salads’ for all seasons! Wild Hive will certainly be testing some of these in our Pilot beds in the Spring and maybe even attempting a mini-allium garden.
Wild Hive would like to extend a HUGE thank you to Stephen for agreeing to give this talk for us - helping to inspire the local and wider community, grow our collective and raise much needed funds to continue our activities to get more people growing sustainably and building local resilience. We must also thank our amazing Wild Hive volunteers, Bay Leaves Larder, Fair Oak Honey and HIWWT and of course, The Hilt who supported this event and helped make it such a success!
Follow Stephen Barstow's Edimentals blog: https://www.edimentals.com/blog/