by Silvana de Soissons•14th June 2011 I am standing in a
beautiful windswept valley close to the village of Northend,
near Bath, and Christopher Robbins, medical herbalist,
pathologist and University lecturer, is telling a group of ten
would-be foragers that all around us there is free food. “Spring
and early summer is the very best time to forage,” he explains.
“The leaves are fresh and green, the plants are still small,
tender and sweet.” As soon as plants start flowering, they will
already have completed their growth structure, so stems are
likely to be very tough and leaves are likely to be bitter. Not
that that is a bad thing, for as Christopher explains, bitter
salad leaves are good for cleansing the liver. We walk single
file past lush grass banks, hawthorn and hazel hedges, wild
orchids, buttercups, cow parsley and beautiful yellow marsh
irises. We are walking on Wessex Water terrain, and to the left
and right Christopher and his partner, Rachel Demuth are
pointing out plants that we can collect for o