Growing Edible Perennials - workshop video - PLANT

Our gardening guru for today’s session of online gardening was Helena Simmons from Ninewells Community Garden in Dundee. She gave us a run down of edible perennials she’s been successfully growing from cuttings and seed and gave a quick demonstration of how to take and root cuttings from woody perennials such as rosemary.

Among the more unusual edibles, we heard of the Tudor’s (and Helena’s) favourite, the skirrets, the perennial kales and rocket, and mountain sorrel along with useful tasting notes and growing tips. You can watch the video recording of the workshop directly on PLANT YouTube channel here.

Resources:

How to Make A Forest Garden by Patrick Whitefield (Book)
Of Plums and Pignuts – a blog by a grower from Aberdeenshire, including a list of plants that have grown well in our climate

Local plant and seed swaps (please pick location local to you and comply with Scottish government guidelines for covid-19 lockdown):

Tayport Comunity Garden is holding a stall to distribute excess seeds/seedlings from the garden and allow people to swap their own. Next session on 31 May, 2-4pm. We will have jerusalem artichokes and perennial kale cuttings – full details here.
St Andrews Edible Campus set up a swapping point at the Tennis Club. Andrea will be refreshing the seedling offering soon, after the night frosts recede
Ninewells Community Garden has a plant stall where you can pick up plants for a donation. Mostly ornamental plants at the moment but strawberries are available and more will be added with time.

Our next workshop is next week with Andrea Roach who will talk about gardening with children. Bookings are now open on Eventbrite. In the meantime, you might want to browse through recordings from previous sessions here.

This workshop series is an informal collaboration between a number of local community food growers in response to increased demand for growing advice under covid-15 lockdown, including Edible Campus (Transition University St Andrews), Strathkinness Community Garden, Ninewells Community Garden, PLANT’s Tayport Community Garden. We would welcome any other contributors, please get in touch with Kaska on blog@tayportgarden.org.