Just past the Spring Equinox and everything is waking from its winter slumber! Learn to forage with wild food expert, Matthew Rooney. Discover delicious wild vegetables and edible trees. Find out how to identify common plants, learn about their use as wild foods, in drinks and crafts, and sample their unusual tastes. This is a 3 to 3.5 hour foraging walk, with a further 1/2 to 1 hour labelling specimens and examining the identification table at the end. Small group with expert tuition. Covers identification, harvesting, preserving, cooking, health benefits and folklore.
“Matthew is an incredible fountain of knowledge when it comes to plants and fungi. We found the forage to be extremely interesting and we learned so much, even though this was our second time. We couldn’t recommend this enough, a brilliant experience.” ~ Hedgerow Forage participant, 2023
Matthew Rooney
Matthew has also taught groups about identification techniques of plants and fungi and foraging for wild edible species for many years. He sees the current interest in wild food species as an opportunity to ignite a deeper interest in plants, fungi and our natural environment. He is a Member of the Association of Foragers and a Member of the British Mycological Society.
Professionally, Matthew is a botanical surveyor and ecological consultant with a specialism in fungi. He qualified as an ecologist with a Bsc (Hons) degree in Ecology from the University of Ulster, then worked as a botanical surveyor specialising in freshwater ecology in Scotland, then coastal and inland waterways. He also spent 25 years developing expertise in cultivating, cloning and propagating native wild mushrooms. Matthew’s interest in plants, ecology and fungi merged in the field of mycoremeditation. Matthew also runs courses on growing and propagating mushrooms – both native, wild species and commercial, indoor varieties.