Jenny Boylan is a forager, wildcrafter, apprentice clinical herbalist, and author of The Beginner Forager’s Calendar series. She currently works on the Heritage Council’s Heritage in Schools Programme, helping to build awareness and appreciation for
Ireland’s rich natural heritage among primary school students Samhain marks an important turning of the wheel and the beginning of winter. With greenery dying down, we begin to look to the trees for their nuts and berries. For herbalists and foragers, it really marks the return to our roots, as we prepare to dig for our nourishment and medicine. But not just yet! Samhain is still a time of abundance, as the crab apples, acorns, beech nuts, hazelnuts, blackberries, rosehips, sloe and hawthorn berries, stone fruits and mushrooms show. Each plant has its own story, its own place in our mythologies, and each one is a portal to our shared past – did you know that the lovely self-heal was also known as the Cailleach’s Tea, or that the Druids loved water mint? We will visit these stories as we meet the wild edible and medicinal plants of the Porchfields in Trim.
Ireland’s rich natural heritage among primary school students Samhain marks an important turning of the wheel and the beginning of winter. With greenery dying down, we begin to look to the trees for their nuts and berries. For herbalists and foragers, it really marks the return to our roots, as we prepare to dig for our nourishment and medicine. But not just yet! Samhain is still a time of abundance, as the crab apples, acorns, beech nuts, hazelnuts, blackberries, rosehips, sloe and hawthorn berries, stone fruits and mushrooms show. Each plant has its own story, its own place in our mythologies, and each one is a portal to our shared past – did you know that the lovely self-heal was also known as the Cailleach’s Tea, or that the Druids loved water mint? We will visit these stories as we meet the wild edible and medicinal plants of the Porchfields in Trim.
