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Australian Native Food Harvest: A Guide for the Passionate Cook and Gardener
They taste great, have amazing health benefits, and grow beautifully in our backyards – so why aren’t we growing and consuming more native Australian edible plants? Julie Weatherhead, an environmental scientist and ecologist from West Gippsland, Victoria, hopes to change that.
Australian Native Food Harvest: A Guide for the Passionate Cook and Gardener provides practical advice for growing, harvesting, and using Australian native plants in the garden and kitchen, whilst exploring Australia’s lost opportunities to fully appreciate the wealth of traditional knowledge in relation to the uses of its native plants.
Australian Native Food Harvest is inspired by Julie’s experiences in growing and using Australian native plants over 20 years at Peppermint Ridge Farm. These experiences have enabled her to identify the tastiest native food plants that will thrive in native and cool climates.
Drawing on her education in permaculture and her own experience developing native food gardens, Julie provides inspiration and useful tips to help you design your own attractive, sustainable native garden that can provide habitat for native wildlife, featuring plants that can survive without much maintenance and taste great in the kitchen.
The book showcases her selection of 30 plants suitable for sub-tropical, temperate and cool climate regions that she knows will thrive – and a further 11 for those with larger spaces, extra habitat species have also been included for those wanting to increase habitat in their home gardens. The tastes of these selected plants are quite unique and the health benefits are astounding.
Over 50 easy-to-follow recipes featuring native Australian flavours to use at home are included in the book as well. The recipes are a culmination of years of experimenting with the flavours and textures of the plants and demonstrate how easy it is to incorporate them into your everyday diet.
The recipes are also tested many times over in Peppermint Ridge Farm’s Schoolhouse and are designed to be accessible for cooks of all experience levels.
Australian Native Food Harvest: A Guide for the Passionate Cook and Gardener provides practical advice for growing, harvesting, and using Australian native plants in the garden and kitchen, whilst exploring Australia’s lost opportunities to fully appreciate the wealth of traditional knowledge in relation to the uses of its native plants.
Australian Native Food Harvest is inspired by Julie’s experiences in growing and using Australian native plants over 20 years at Peppermint Ridge Farm. These experiences have enabled her to identify the tastiest native food plants that will thrive in native and cool climates.
Drawing on her education in permaculture and her own experience developing native food gardens, Julie provides inspiration and useful tips to help you design your own attractive, sustainable native garden that can provide habitat for native wildlife, featuring plants that can survive without much maintenance and taste great in the kitchen.
The book showcases her selection of 30 plants suitable for sub-tropical, temperate and cool climate regions that she knows will thrive – and a further 11 for those with larger spaces, extra habitat species have also been included for those wanting to increase habitat in their home gardens. The tastes of these selected plants are quite unique and the health benefits are astounding.
Over 50 easy-to-follow recipes featuring native Australian flavours to use at home are included in the book as well. The recipes are a culmination of years of experimenting with the flavours and textures of the plants and demonstrate how easy it is to incorporate them into your everyday diet.
The recipes are also tested many times over in Peppermint Ridge Farm’s Schoolhouse and are designed to be accessible for cooks of all experience levels.
192 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2016
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June 7, 2025
2025: The revised second edition is even better, with new chapters and a redesign. To plant next: a small leaf tamarind.
2020: Excellent resource on temperate and cool climate Australian native foods. Includes a chapter on how native foods have been neglected commercially in Australia until recently, then profiles of the top 20 recommended native foods for home gardeners, followed by recipes.
At our place, we have found native Australian foods more fussy and difficult to grow than exotics, and our mountain pepper died despite much coddling during a hot summer. In this book, the growing advice for mountain pepper does note it requires a lot of watering, however the profile on muntries doesn't note that it requires sandy soil.
The "Tour and Taste" at the author's Peppermint Ridge Farm is highly recommended.
2020: Excellent resource on temperate and cool climate Australian native foods. Includes a chapter on how native foods have been neglected commercially in Australia until recently, then profiles of the top 20 recommended native foods for home gardeners, followed by recipes.
At our place, we have found native Australian foods more fussy and difficult to grow than exotics, and our mountain pepper died despite much coddling during a hot summer. In this book, the growing advice for mountain pepper does note it requires a lot of watering, however the profile on muntries doesn't note that it requires sandy soil.
The "Tour and Taste" at the author's Peppermint Ridge Farm is highly recommended.
Displaying 1 of 1 review