Foraging Course – Welcome!

This Welcome Unit aims to:
Introduce the contents of the Urban Herbology Foraging course, the concept of urban foraging and outlines why the Foraging course focuses upon foraging urban herbs rather than other urban plants. It also explains how to work through the course.

At the end of the unit you should be able to:
- State the main topic areas which this course covers.
- State how your work for this course will be assessed.
- Organise your personal notes and assignments for this course.
- Briefly explain the concept of an Edible City.
- Define what a herb is.
- List three reasons why herb foraging may be preferable to regular foraging.

In the UH Foraging Course you will learn:
-How to forage safely and ethically
-Practical ways to use foraged herbs
-Characteristics of nine important plant families
-Essential botany to help foragers understand and ID plants
-Which urban plants can be harvested when
-How to actually forage the herbs
-About a plant ally
-About poisonous plants

Course organisation
The Foraging course is organised into 4 modules:

Introducting Urban Foraging
Essential Foraging Skills
Botany for Foragers
Plant Families for Foragers

Each module contains a number of units for you to work through. There are 29 units in total.

Progression
There are 4 levels of unit access in this course. This is encourage progression through the units. The levels are called A, B, C, D. Student's starting the course begin with access to all the units at Level A. When they have successfully completed that work and the tutor has marked it, they can move on to the Level B units.

Assessment of your Foraging work
At the end of each unit in this course, there are tasks to complete. Some of these are optional tasks, which you may like to complete. Others are clearly indicated as Assessed Tasks. Your responses to the Assessed Tasks need to be shared with your tutor for marking and feedback.

There are four points in the Foraging course, where you will only be able to progress to the next units, when the previous unit assessments have been successfully completed and marked by your tutor. This is to ensure that you have understood the earlier work.

Course Certificate
To qualify for your Urban Herbology Foraging Course certificate, you need to :

1. Work through each of the Foraging units and successfully complete all of the Assessed Tasks. These must be completed and marked as a pass by your tutor.

2. Submit a summary to your tutor, of how your journey through the UH Foraging Course has impacted you. Your summary does not need to be very long but it needs to show what you have gained from this course. It can be in one of a variety of forms (perhaps a short report, personal poetry, drawings with annotations etc).

How to share Assessed Tasks
Some of your assessments are shared with your tutor though the Foraging Forum and other assessments will be shared with your tutor via email.

Please ensure that each task states the unit and name, when you send it through.

We strongly advise you to keep a backup copy of all work which you send to your tutor for marking. Please do not rely on email or the forums as a way to organize your work.

Organizing your notes and tasks
Decide on how you will make and keep personal notes as you work through this course.

You may like to begin a Google doc or purchase a notebook or ring binder to file your work and keep it organised.

There are some worksheets to complete through the course but most of the tasks will be notes sent via email or the Foraging Forum.

Sharing with the UH community
The Foraging Forum and the private Facebook group are great places to ask questions and share your thoughts with your tutor and the other students, about any of your foraging work and experiences. Please feel free to use them.

Many of your assessed tasks will be submitted to the Foraging Forum to allow for discussion with other students, to encourage deeper engagement and learning.

Edible cities
Some thoughts from your tutor, Lynn Shore.

I believe that cities should be edible environments and that city dwellers should know how to care for and use the plants. My dream is for streets to be planted with edible fruit, nut and leaf trees. In many places, this is already happening to some extent but we can do so much more! Buildings such as schools and hospitals could be obliged to incorporate fruit bushes and other edibles in their planting schemes. What a difference that could make.

If more Urbanites understood how to forage safely and sustainably, they could help to nurture the whole ecosystem and create far healthier and more pleasant places in which to live. I believe that increased urban foraging will act as a driver to further clean and improve towns and cities. When you eat from an area, you want it to be clean...

Since talking about this in a TEDx talk a few years ago, I feel that the tide is really turning and many people, all over the world are jumping on board and asking for change or creating the change themselves. This is wonderful.

If we want edible towns and cities to become a reality, we must take action and help it to drive the idea forward!

Urban Foraging Today
How much free food grows in your town? There are hundreds of edible species growing in Amsterdam and most other cities around the world.

Some forager-favorites are: Nettles, Elderberries, Apples, Lime leaves, Hazelnuts, Ginkgo nuts, Blackberry shoots, Ground Elder leaves, Rosehips and Cleavers.

I try to eat a little something from the city every day of the year. It connects me to the seasons, the local landscape, enriches my diet and it's a great way to meet interesting people!

Just a pinch of herbs
Herbs are generally defined as plants, or parts of a plant, which are used for medicine or for cooking. They may be strongly flavoured or scented plants which help the digestion or they may improve the flavour of meals. They may be medicinal and very helpful for making simple home remedies.

Generally, when we think of a herb, we think of a plant that we only need to harvest a small amount of. Perhaps just a few leaves of Sage to add to a meal or brew up a cup of tea.

This light harvesting reduces environmental impact and reduces the risk of poisoning and eating polluted plants.

Urban foragers should focus on finding "herbs" rather than "vegetables".
Focusing on local herbs increases our creativity, it reduces negative environmental impact and it promotes understanding of the plants which grow in urban areas.

How clean is our food?
Where does our food really come from? How clean is it? Who has handled it? How processed is it? I wonder how many of these questions we can answer with certainty?

City foraging does have risks. We need to consider urban pollution, local laws, poisonous plants and other factors. I like to take responsibility for at least a small proportion of my family’s diet and I look after the land where some of my foraged herbs grow.

Urban Foraging is increasingly popular so it is important that we understand how to do it safely and ethically.

Please add any notes which you find useful, to your personal Foraging notes. There are no Assessed Tasks for this Welcome Unit.

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