Our gardens and parks are packed with delicious leaves, flowers, fruit and nuts. Most of us have no idea that they are edible. We may know that nettles and wild sorrel make soup but we don’t know where to find or how to recognise the edible plants in our own cultivated gardens. Drawing upon decades of experience and new research for his latest book, The Worldwide Forager, the legendary godfather of foraging Roger Phillips will teach you how to get started.

Roger’s short guide to foraging, filmed in a garden square in the heart of London, is divided into four easy-to-digest lessons of around ten minutes each:

Part 1: Mushrooms and Fungi

Part 2: Herbs, Leaves and Flowers

Part 3: Fruit and Nuts

Part 4: Roots and Tubers

Join Roger as he explains where to forage, which plants to grow in your garden, and how best to use your foraged foods, from hollyhock to pineapple guava, in delicious and healthy meals and drinks. Each lesson is beautifully illustrated with Roger’s photographs, taken on research trips and foraging expeditions around the world over many decades.

During the course of Roger’s four lessons, you’ll learn all about the surprising and delicious edibles you can find in your own garden or local park – wherever you are in the world.

As with all online courses, you get a quiz and certificate of completion, access to community forum and printable notes. The lessons can be viewed as many times as you like.

Roger’s course is free to Idler Academy members.

About Roger Phillips

In 1975 Roger Phillips set out to develop an encyclopaedic collection of books to show the difference between plants as diverse as mosses, roses and annuals. His first book, Wild Flowers of Britain (1977), sold 400,000 copies in the first year. He has since written more than twenty additional volumes (often with his co-author Martyn Rix) selling over six million copies worldwide. Roger has also written and presented two major six-part TV series on gardening for the BBC and Channel 4.