Where the wild things are

…For the past four years, Grubb has been acquainting himself with the medicinal and nutritional qualities of these plants that thrive on neglect, often in poor soils, on marginal land. He is an urban forager: a student of nourishing foods that can be gathered for free in the city. On this glorious morning the weedscape looks idyllic: the hawthorn and wild roses are in flower and birds are singing in the tree tops.

Grubb is heading for his favourite patch of wild food on the creek – a plum grove, which he says yield the sweetest, most delicious plums he has ever tasted, “like eating cherries”. He says his interest in weeds sprang from his work as founding editor of EnergyBulletin.net, an online site dedicated to the proposition that petroleum production has peaked and that our present way of life cannot continue indefinitely.


During his years as a voluntary researcher on peak oil, Grubb began to wonder how city dwellers would feed themselves if agriculture based on petroleum products – chemical sprays and fertilisers, long-distance trucking and refrigeration – became unviable. Other countries have turned to their sources of wild food in times of crisis. Grubb says that before the Argentine economy collapsed, for instance, the government distributed edible weed pamphlets.

As a forager, Grubb observes some rules. He says it is important to identify the weed correctly before attempting to ingest it and to check whether the plant has been sprayed and if it is growing in a clean environment (he avoids the watercress growing in the Merri Creek). Private property is respected, but fruit hanging over fences and lanes, or growing on abandoned blocks, is fair game. He also leaves enough for others who may need it.

EnergyBulletin is now edited in the United States and Grubb is working on another online project, eatthesuburbs.org, which is concerned with “creative suburban adaptations to peak oil and climate change”. He recommends two books on local weeds: Useful Weeds at Our Doorstep, a self-published book by Hunter Valley herbalist Pat Collins, which can be ordered on the internet, and Australian Weeds by Gai Stern, published by Harper & Row in 1986.

The Age (Australia)