Lockdown has been a creative time for many, including Anna Locke from Hastings. She is a gardener, permaculture designer, facilitator and small farmer and she loves growing and preserving food and her book “The Forager’s Garden”, published in spring 2021, explains how to grow an ‘edible sanctuary’ in a backyard.
It gives an overview of organic gardening techniques, great for beginners, and a basic guide to creating an interesting, but also giving, garden. It has valuable information on how weeds could become harvests, and on techniques to grow lots of food with minimal work, and is about reconnecting with nature to enhance people’s well-being.
Anna dedicates the book to “my contemporaries who don’t particularly know how to garden, who don’t particularly have the time – but want to be more ecological and would like to grow food in their gardens (or allotments) and feed healthy food to their children, friends or family.” The book is beautifully presented with lots of pictures, designs and explanations to make it accessible to beginners in the art of planting, but is also interesting for gardeners with knowledge. Anna said: “There is a saying which the book aims to convey which is ‘to push the edge of permaculture to a wider audience’.
Fergus Garrett, head gardener at Great Dixter comments: “Anna Locke gives us a fascinating and refreshing insight into a world where food growing at home imitates multi-layered communities of nature. Here, foraging is not simply about reaping wild food from the countryside, but bringing a bit of the countryside into your garden. This is an engaging read, full of experience, information and advice”.
Anna also runs instant starter courses online in permaculture and turning a scrubby field into a farm, go to www.permacultureonline.co.uk or Instagram: permacultureanna
The book is published by Permanent Publications – email: enquiries@permaculture.co.uk.
Image Credits: Heidi Foster , Heidi Foster / from book .