South African-born, Brooklyn-based writer Marie Viljoen is our resident weed queen, a professional forager who, in her words, “serves up portable, wild-inspired picnics to lure people into the wonder of urban green spaces several times a month.” She is also an avid gardener (with a background in garden design) and, lucky for us, a longtime Gardenista contributor. For the past 10 years, she’s written eloquently on everything from her mother’s lush, rambling garden in Cape Town and her own small but mighty terrace garden in New York City, to foraging for dandelion leaves in the spring and hunting for wood ear mushrooms in the fall. Oftentimes, at the end of these stories, she treats us to one of her simple but genius recipes starring the fruits of her foraging. (Thanks to her, we will never look at mugwort the same way.)
The author of two must-read books, 66 Square Feet: A Delicious Life, One Woman, One Terrace, 92 Recipes and Forage, Harvest, Feast: A Wild-Inspired Cuisine, Marie, below, shares her thoughts on potted cacti (meh), basil (yay), and more.
Photography by Marie Viljoen, unless otherwise noted.
Your first garden memory:
Planting big fat seeds in the patch of garden my mother assigned to me when I was about four.
Garden-related book you return to time and again:
Andrea Wulf’s The Brother Gardeners. She writes incredibly well, so there’s that, but I am also fascinated by the story of how North American plants became established in Europe. Our black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia), for example, is Europe’s “acacia” (the one that honeybees turn into pale, expensive honey). She writes how the warm colors of American trees and shrubs like maples and sumac transformed and lit up the autumnal European landscape.
And Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. It resonates with me on so many levels, in terms of how she views a landscape and plants; and it informs me, too, of Native traditions that have been lost, suppressed, or extinguished. She crafts words exceptionally well. I have just pre-ordered her new book, The Serviceberry.
Instagram account that inspires you:
The Wild Bird Fund @wildbirdfund. They care for injured and sick New York birds—everything from pigeons to the most unusual, migratory visitors who have crashed into windows and onto sidewalks. I find birds extraordinary and uplifting, and feel that they are a vestige of the planet as it once was—these ancient pathways over us that they still follow, despite every obstruction we have thrown up in their way. Their posts are very clever, because they focus on the positive outcomes while educating about the large and small challenges that wild birds face daily.
