Hi everyone! My name is Zuza and I live in Amsterdam Noord (Tuindorp Oostzaan). I come from Poland where foraging is more common and legal, for example most people know about forest mushrooms and forage them yearly in fall. So, I’m aware that it isn’t fully legal in the Netherlands (amount limitations) but I also forage mushrooms in Dutch forests, certainly not in the same amounts I would do back in my homeland tho. For the plants, I didn’t grow up with this knowledge unfortunately, only knowing a few species but we never used them back home.
I like to think of Amsterdam Noord to be more of a ‘natuurgebied’ than a ‘stadsdeel’, where the proportion of people to nature is a bit more in balance than in the rest of the city. I sometimes forage here some of the more commonly known species like elderflower, blackberries and wild garlic but I would love to learn more. In recent years I’ve seen nice initiatives in my area, for example a little foraging path someone setup in a green space near my home or an urban food forest in Noord Oogst. I also recently bought a home with a garden, I’m finishing renovating the home and now I would like to set up a small food forest of my own in the garden.
Finding out that foraging plants in the Netherlands is illegal was a surprise to me! It’s not extremely popular but I see and hear about people doing it, so my feeling is that it’s like with most dutch rules – they are more treated like guidelines and are not really enforced by the state.