Cultural Garden

''This is the perfect companion guide for every budding forager. Exquisitely illustrated with full-colour paintings of all the plants and herbs in the book, ranging from dandelion and sorrel to sea beet and samphire, ''Edible Wild Plants and Herbs'' is both a cookbook and field guide to the identification and use of foodstuffs from the wild. There are almost 400 recipes covering nearly 100 different plant varieties and the illustrations, drawn from life by one of the country's leading botanical artists, show the edible parts of the plants at their peak time for picking. In addition, there is a calendar indicating what plants to look for at each season of the year, information on where the plants are found and how to identify them. In the past, the home kitchen provided a family with all its medicines and cosmetics as well as its food, wine, pickles and preserves. Our ancestors were resourceful and imaginative and very much in tune with nature; this book recaptures their harmonious, sustainable way of life by setting down for the modern reader all that knowledge and lore. There are recipes for soups, sauces, main dishes, salads, pickles, jams, sorbets, as well as teas, syrups and lotions.''