“The best way to explain it is to do it.”

– Dodo, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

March/April usually signals the start of the foraging season for us. This year has been so wet, this bank holiday weekend was the first time we were really able to get out, and so we went into the Forest of Dean in search of Wild Garlic.

It was a little later than we usually go, but here it was only just beginning to flower, so amazingly we hadn’t missed the best of it.

I love the smell of Wild Garlic – it always makes me feel like I’m in proper woodlands. There’s absolutely loads of lovely places to forage for it in the Wye Valley – we tend to go around Symonds Yat, but if you drive/cycle from Monmouth down to Tintern, you will smell it in the woods literally all around you!

The thing about foraging with children is, they all want to eat it straight away!

A good rule to follow when foraging Wild Garlic is to only take a few leaves from each plant.

You can then substitute it in pretty much anything you would normally use garlic cloves for! You can also freeze it straight after picking & washing, so you can use it after the season ends too.

I cannot lie, it feels odd to only just be picking wild garlic when elderflower season should almost be upon us! Elderflower picking is one of our favourites, so we are really looking forward to the late May/early June sunshine for that one!