Roberts - 100 edible and healing flowers: cultivating, cooking, restoring health

Margaret Roberts

Edible & Healing

Flowers

cultivating cooking restoring health

Text by Margaret Roberts

Photographs by Phyllis Green

Published by Struik Nature

(an imprint of Random House Struik (Pty) Ltd)

Reg. No. 1966/003153/07

First Floor, Wembley Square,

Solan Road, Gardens, Cape Town, 8001

PO Box 1144, Cape Town, 8000 South Africa

Visit www.randomstruik.co.za and join the Struik Nature Club

for updates, news, events, and special offers

First published in 2000 by Spearhead as Edible & Medicinal Flowers

New edition published in 2014 by Struik Nature

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Copyright in text, 2014: Margaret Roberts

Copyright in illustrations, 2014: Margaret Roberts

Copyright in photographs, 2014: Phyllis Green

unless indicated otherwise alongside images

Front cover photograph: Julie Workman

Copyright in published edition, 2014: Random House Struik (Pty) Ltd

Publisher: Pippa Parker

Managing editor: Helen de Villiers

Editor: Julia Casciola

Project manager: Colette Alves

Design director: Janice Evans

Typesetting: Tessa Fortuin

Proofreader: Emsie du Plessis

Reproduction by Hirt & Carter Cape (Pty) Ltd

Printing and binding: Times Offset (M) Sdn Bhd, Malaysia

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner(s).

ISBN 978 1 77584 037 4 (Print)

ISBN 978 1 77584 152 4 (ePub)

ISBN 978 1 77584 153 1 (ePDF)

ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR DOCTOR BEFORE STARTING A HOME TREATMENT. THE INFORMATION IN THESE

PAGES IS IN NO WAY INTENDED TO REPLACE YOUR DOCTORS ADVICE. ALWAYS BE 100% CERTAIN OF

THE CORRECT IDENTIFICATION OF A PLANT BEFORE USING IT. WHEN IN DOUBT, DONT USE!

It is with great appreciation that I stand before a really amazing team of professional book creators. Thanks to Pippa Parker, who heads Struik Nature and whose unending and infectious ideas spark off so much I can hardly keep up! As a result of Janice Evans incredible ability to create a visual feast, I look at this book in awe, and with the team of professional editors, layout designers, and competent and willing book creators like Colette Alves, I am thrilled to hand over my writings and recipes, knowing that they are putting in place a great and fascinating bouquet!

Once again, I thank my long-time friend, Annatjie van Wyk, who has played a part in so many of my books, for her patient typing of my many handwritten pages. Bless you for your ever willing assistance!

To Phyllis Green, for her numerous photographs of all the old familiar plants in the Herbal Centre gardens, and for the new beauties she has come to know and photograph, my most grateful thanks always.

To my daughter, Sandra, my endless gratitude for her new recipes and exciting food ideas, her endless support, her interest in all things edible that build health, and her kitchen garden that stretches further and further in front of her restaurant, which gives hotel school students and young chefs new ideas and inspiration.

Flowers are surely the most beautiful of all God's creations. They say, 'I love you', 'I'm sorry', 'Please forgive me' and 'Thank you'. Flowers send blessings and good wishes. They are present in bouquets and posies at the beginning of our lives, throughout all the celebrations and great days, and also on the not-so-great days. And at the end of our lives, flowers speak of grief and mourning, of sympathy and compassion, of loss and the great change and challenge that death brings.

All the more precious is the role that flowers play in our day-to-day lives, where they can be incorporated into food, and used in bathing, washing, and healing of big and little wounds. Flowers are well loved, respected and appreciated. They thread their beauty into every aspect of our time here on Earth.

Is it any wonder, then, that they become our companions when all else becomes too much, too exhausting and too worrying? Just a breath of their fragrance, just a pause to look deep into the heart of a flower and experience that moment of upliftment, changes us for the better.

So here is a salute to flowers, a feeling of gratitude and wonder that nature gives us so much that betters, inspires and uplifts us. And here is to flower gardens everywhere!

In 2000 I wrote Edible & Medicinal Flowers, never dreaming that my gardens of flowers would reach into so many places, and so I was spurred on to rewrite it incorporating new recipes and the new flowers I have grown in the interim years.

Health, wellness and organic gardening go hand in hand, and with these easy-to-grow flowers and their vast edible and medicinal properties, I foresee an enjoyment of wellbeing, as people benefit from planting gardens of healing flowers.

And so I put into your hands my new recipes, thoughts, plantings a garden of health and wealth and I urge you to replan, rethink and replant your present garden into the paradise of food and natural medicine it was intended to be.

I dedicate this book to gardeners everywhere! May every page inspire you to grow your own edible and healing flowers close at hand for everyday use to build wellness and great positivity!

Margaret Roberts

The Herbal Centre, De Wildt

North West Province, South Africa

Food plants combine well wtih edible flowers, making for a beautiful and valuable garden. Here, in the nursery, food plants are ready for sale.