Edible Forest – Helen Lawrence – Week Five

13 Jun 2020

Artist and chef, Helen Lawrence works and owns Bath institution Demuths, a vegan cookery school, this will inform her art work. Helen has plans to create an edible Forest, using medicinal herbs, seasonal and plant-based food, found and foraged in the forests and fields around Bath. Helen is also planning to collaborate with Castle Farm, to forage for edibles to inspire her creative cooking.

Helen shares her work and inspirations here:

“My starting point as a creator is always nature. Place is important, where am I, what’s growing, and what do I notice are my first questions, using all my senses I then feel how I can respond whether through drawing, making or coming up with a recipe. Art, cooking and nature are so closely linked for me so for Forest of Imagination I am imagining what my ‘edible forest of imagination’ might look like, journeying each day to the outdoors and looking at edible plants specifically and see how I’m inspired by them.

I’m starting from home in my front and back garden, then onto my local walking spot for some wild foraging by the river Avon. A visit to my local grower Jo at castle farm on the edge of Bath to see what she has in her garden and pick her beautiful knowledgeable mind about all things green and edible. Then finally to my ‘secret garden’ a rural churchyard close to Bath full of both wild and cultivated plants, one of my favourite spots to be in nature, next to a lake full of migrating birds. I anticipate drawings, land art, sculpture, and lots of recipes to share coming out of these daily encounters.”

See how Helen’s Edible Forest unfolds this week as she shares her creative foraging and cooking with us this week for Virtual Forest 2020.