The healthiest foods you can forage in the UK

Find out more about safe foraging and how best to forage in towns and cities. Check out our elderflower recipes and find out more about samphire.

Who says health foods have to be expensive? Many UK public spaces hold little-noticed multitudes of edible plants, from hedgerow berries and woodland leaves to seaweeds, samphire and dandelions. Many of these are packed with nutrients and make better eating than much supermarket fruit and veg.

“You can swap in foraged foods for the foods you already know and love,” says Good Food’s Barney Desmazery, resident foraging expert. “Treat wild garlic leaves like you would spinach leaves, or treat the stalks like you would chives. If you swap like for like, the possibilities are endless.”

A rainbow of edible plant species grow wild in the UK and each one has a unique nutritional profile. We spoke to seasoned foragers and a registered nutritionist to learn how to use nine of the healthiest foraged foods in your cooking – and what these plants can do for your health.

How to forage safely and considerately

Tips from Good Food’s Barney Desmazery:

• Be very careful about what you pick. Some common plants, such as hemlock, look like edible plants but are actually deadly (hemlock has similar-looking leaves to parsley or wild celery).
• Don’t forage on private land unless you have the landowner’s permission. Certain parks and other places can appear to be public but may actually be private.
• Avoid over-picking scarce or endangered edible plants. For instance, primroses are delicious little flowers but they’re becoming scarce.
• Be conscious of seasonality. Some plants are edible only at certain times of year, such as nettles, which can cause kidney problems (for some people) when they’re not in season.

Nine healthy foods you can forage

Wild garlic

When to pick: late February to early May

Where to find: damp, shaded woodland

What it can be good for: blood pressure, antioxidant

How to use it: pastries, pesto, in place of spinach

Commonly carpeting damp woodland areas between February and May, wild garlic is among the most widely foraged foods in the UK. You’ll sometimes smell the plant’s pleasantly pungent aroma before you spot it.

Research has identified that wild garlic may offer diverse health benefits, including antimicrobial and perhaps even antitumour effects. “As well as for its medicinal properties, it is known for containing phytochemicals and antioxidants,” says registered nutritionist, Gopi Chandratheva. “Studies have shown that alliums may help lower blood pressure and wild garlic is thought to be the most effective of the family.”

One of the easiest ways to incorporate wild garlic into your diet is to use its leaves to make a wild garlic pesto, which can be added to dishes such as pasta or roasted vegetables.

“You can also use the leaves in place of spinach leaves in a soup,” Barney suggests.

Rosehips

When to pick: September to December

Where to find: sunny hedgerows and woodland boundaries

What it can be good for: skin, immunity, antioxidants

How to use it: syrups, cordials, preserves

While all rosehips are edible, it’s the fruits of the ‘dog rose’ – a wild, climbing species – that are most commonly foraged. They often grow along sun-kissed hedgerows and woodland boundaries, and they’re traditionally picked after the first frost (for the best flavour), between September and December.

“Rosehips are absolutely packed with vitamins, especially vitamin C, and you can boil them down with sugar to make a lovely syrup,” says Barney. You can also use the fruit to make rosehip cordial or rosehip and crabapple jelly.

Research has shown that rosehip is good for the skin, which is likely thanks to the fruit’s high content of vitamins and fatty acids. Its vitamin C content is far higher than that of other sources such as orange juice – a fact which was not lost on Brits during the food shortages of WWII, when foraging rosehips was encouraged through a public health campaign.

Dandelions

When to pick: spring (flowers, leaves and stems) or late autumn to winter (roots)

Where to find: lawns, parks, fields, meadows

What it can be good for: liver, gut

How to use it: salads, risottos, tea

Many of us have dandelions growing around our homes – perhaps in greater numbers than we’d like. We should be thankful because the whole of this plant is edible, flavoursome and good for your body.

Among the various health effects of dandelions, one of the most unusual is its apparent benefit to the liver. Not only does dietary dandelion protect this vital organ, it may even help to regenerate liver tissue. These good effects are thought to relate to dandelion’s antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.

“Dandelion leaves are bitter and delicious, and you can use them in a salad,” says Barney. “If you have them in your garden or on land you control, you can put plant pots over the dandelions to prevent light from reaching them, as this makes them less bitter and more like other salad leaves.

“During rationing, people made dandelion root ‘coffee’, because the plant has that sort of bitter coffee-like flavour,” he adds.

Liver health and a satisfying bitterness are not the only good reasons to eat dandelion. “It provides nutrients such as vitamin C, fibre and potassium, along with bioactive compounds that may support metabolic health – though evidence in humans remains limited,” says Gopi.

Sloe berries

When to pick: late autumn to early winter (after the first frost)

Where to find: hedgerows, canal towpaths, field boundaries

What it can be good for: brain, antioxidant

How to use it: flavouring spirits, syrups

Sloes are the plump, patchily purple-blue berries of the blackthorn bush. In this writer’s opinion they are among the tastiest foraged foods (when made into a drink, not when eaten) and they are also understood to have some valuable health benefits, including neuroprotective and antioxidant effects.

“They’re full of vitamins and antioxidant tannins,” says Barney. “A lot of people use sloes to make flavoured vodka or sloe gin but there are sober-friendly options too.

“This year, I steeped sloes to make a Korean syrup called a cheong. You basically sit them in an equal quantity of sugar and let them reduce, so they release their own liquid and dilute the sugar. You end up with a very delicious sloe syrup that’s beautiful over ice cream.”

You could also try making this sloe paste, that's delicious with cheese. If you can’t wait till after the first frost to pick your sloes, pop them into the freezer until frozen before using them.

Nettles

When to pick: early spring (before the plant has flowered – wear thick gloves!)

Where to find: damp areas of woodlands, parks, gardens and many other locations

What it can be good for: menstrual, menopause, prostate, blood sugar control

How to use it: soups, teas, in place of spinach

Please don’t eat them straight off the plant but, when prepared correctly, nettle leaves could become a tasty and valuable staple of your diet. Studies have shown these iron-rich leaves to be particularly beneficial in moderating premenstrual symptoms and hormonal changes during menopause,

“I think nettles are one of the most underused food resources in the country,” says Barney. “We all know what they are, they’re more nutritious than most of the greens that we buy in the shops and they are absolutely delicious.”

Nettles star in some of our favourite foraged food recipes, including ricotta ravioli. However, according to Barney, it’s important to forage this plant at the right time of year. “You shouldn’t eat them after they’ve started flowering, because they can then cause kidney problems in some people,” he advises.

Wear thick gloves and long sleeves when harvesting and preparing nettles, for obvious reasons. The nettles won’t sting you after they’ve been cooked properly.

Blackberries

When to pick: August to early October (when the berries are black)

Where to find: hedgerows, country lanes, canal towpaths

What it can be good for: brain, bones, cardiovascular, eyes

How to use it: jams, crumbles, raw (after rinsing)

The berries of the bramble bush are a bounteous sight in many British hedgerows. Not only are they a delight when eaten raw or baked, they are also thought to be neuroprotective and good for bone health.

“Blackberries contain a variety of nutrients including potassium, magnesium and calcium, as well as vitamins A, C, E and most of our B vitamins,” says Gopi.

“They are also rich in anthocyanins – powerful antioxidants that give blackberries their deep purple colour. Research has shown that these compounds can protect our cells from damage and they can make a positive impact on our cardiovascular health, cognitive function and vision health, as well as having anti-inflammatory properties.”

It’s a simple pleasure to add blackberries to your diet. They’re lovely eaten raw (after rinsing) but can also be used to make blackberry jam, blackberry cake and many other homely, wholesome treats.

Elderberries and elderflowers

When to pick: August to October (elberberries) or May to June (elderflowers)

Where to find: woodlands, hedgerows, scrubland

What it can be good for: diabetes control, cold symptoms, heart health

How to use it: cordials, syrups

The elder shrub cordially invites you to enjoy a bouquet of health benefits. Via its dark tart-tasting berries or its pale and delicate flowers, this ingredient can counteract oxidative stress, manage diabetes and lower the risk of heart disease. “They also have antioxidant, antiviral and antibacterial properties, due to their rich content of bioactive compounds,” Gopi notes.

For Barney, elderberries are the ultimate food to forage for health benefits. “They’re a powerhouse of vitamins and antioxidants,” he says. “Try making a syrup out of elderberries for yourself to ease a cold or a fever. Elderberry vinegar and elderflower cordial are also delicious, and the latter is quite a good source of vitamin C.”

Although some foragers choose to eat elderberries raw, Barney advises that cooking them is the safer option. “It’s down to the specific variety but, in some cases, raw elderberries will give you a very upset stomach – so don’t just pick and eat them on a hike,” he says.

Seaweed

When to pick: spring to autumn

Where to find: coastal areas, in the intertidal zone at low tide

What it can be good for: blood pressure

How to use it: soups, stews, dried for seasoning

“Considering we’re an island with so much delicious, nutritious seaweed, it flummoxes me how little we use it,” says Barney. “In Korea and Japan most people eat it at least once a day.”

Many seaweeds are pleasant to eat and almost all varieties that grow in the intertidal zone (between the high tide and low tide marks around the coast) are edible. They’re an abundant source of nutrients including fibre, protein and polyphenols, and it has been shown that eating seaweed can help us to manage our blood pressure.

“There are about 700 species of seaweed in the North Atlantic but only about a dozen are good to eat,” says Craig Evans, a coastal forager. “I normally use siphon weed or pepper dulse but the main type used for food is dulse – it has the highest vitamin K (potassium) content of any food. Then there’s laver, which is the same type of seaweed used to make nori in Japan but which is used to make laverbread on the west coast of Wales.”

When foraging seaweed, there are some special considerations to take into account. “You should never harvest it from near inhabited areas because it can pick up heavy metals like cadmium,” says Craig. “When you do harvest it, don’t pull it from where it attaches to the rock (which is a part called the holdfast). Instead, snip off the top third so that the seaweed can keep growing.”

If you’ve successfully foraged some seaweed, try it in this bavette steak recipe.

Samphire

When to pick: June to August

Where to find: coastal marshlands and estuaries

What it can be good for: immune system, gut health

How to use it: with fish and pasta dishes

Another coastal treasure, samphire is rich in minerals and amino acids, and has been touted as a healthier alternative to salt which imparts a similarly satisfying flavour. It pairs beautifully with seafoods such as prawns and skate.

“There are three main types of samphire,” Craig explains. “The one you tend to get in restaurants is marsh samphire, which is an annual that grows from seed in the same places. There’s another one called rock samphire, which is a perennial grass in the same root stock year after year and it tastes totally different. And then there’s golden samphire, which is about three feet tall with a yellow flower.”

When harvesting samphire, use scissors to cut off the top part of the plant, rather than pulling it up.

How much food should you forage?

Given the hidden wealth of delicious and healthy foods you can forage in the UK you might feel tempted to start picking wild, edible plants on a large scale. It’s certainly a good thing to make foraged food a part of your diet but taking too much from nature could mean that the health benefits you enjoy are tainted with ecological harm, so we should exercise some restraint.

“It’s really nice for us to pick ingredients and do stuff with them but you have to appreciate that nature relies on these foods far more than we do,” says Barney. “Don’t ever take more than you need, don’t try to make huge batches for your friends and try to pick from a broad area, rather than just one patch.”

Factoring in nature’s needs it’s perhaps best to pick wild foods as a healthy dietary supplement – one that doesn’t require a trip to your local retailer of homeopathic remedies.

“Foraged foods are best thought of as nutrient-dense additions, rather than miracle ingredients,” says Gopi. “While many are rich in fibre, minerals and antioxidant plant compounds, the health claims around them are often broader than the available evidence supports. The real value lies in adding diversity, seasonality and whole ingredients to your diet – factors consistently linked to better long-term health.”