Bounty hunter

Longtime forager Helen Lehndorf aims to help others discover edible plants and cut food bills.

-  SHARON STEPHENSON

The Manawatu River Shared Pathway in Palmerston North runs along the river's western bank, a 10.3km asphalt track that takes in a lagoon, dog park and a wilderness reserve of oak trees bowed by unseasonably warm temperatures.

It's where you go to find Helen Lehndorf. The day we speak, the writer and forager is behind a flax bush, pulling tiny purple berries from an elderflower tree. Later, the 50-year-old will boil them with cloves, ginger and cinnamon, add a glug of honey, then bottle it for a shot of vitamin C whenever she feels a cold coming on.

Before Lehndorftakes the 15-minute walk home, she'll fill her basket with nasturtium flowers and chickweed leaves for tonight's salad, along with bright-green fennel seeds that might end up in a tea or a fritter, depending on how she feels.

Foraging has become popular with foodies and hipsters, and chefs in high-end restaurants such as Copenhagen's Noma charge eye-watering sums for food plucked from the local landscape. But Lehndorf was doing it long before that.

"Although when I was growing up, we called it gathering or scrumping," says Lehndorf, whose new book, A Forager's Life: Finding my heart and home in nature, details her lifelong passion for wild foods. "I didn't hear the word foraging till much later on. But it's the same concept - eating with the seasons, finding wilding fruit trees or wild herbs on isolated roads in summer or gathering field mushrooms in autumn."

In her third book, Lehndorf, who also teaches creative writing at Massey University, splices memoir with foraging principles and tips on how to make the most of what Mother Nature has to offer within the city limits. She also manages to wrestle a number of foraged recipes into the 300 pages, from spiced miso with steamed pühā to dandelion hot chocolate.