‘It’s trendy’: wild garlic foragers leave bad taste in mouth of Cornish residents – The Guardian
Usually in the springtime, Millham Lane in the Cornish town of Lostwithiel is flanked by thick, unbroken banks of strongly scented wild garlic.
But this year ugly gaps have appeared in the bright green swathe after they were stripped by foragers – apparently professionals – intent on sourcing a fresh, free ingredient for fashionable dishes such as wild garlic pesto.
The situation has become so acute that the local councillor has suggested that people take down car registration numbers and contact the police if they spot foragers, and some townsfolk have mooted organising wild garlic patrols.
Rachel Fisher, who often walks on the lane, said: “It is awash with wild garlic every year. Local people, myself included, forage a bit but it never looks hacked to bits. When it’s a few local people it’s fine.
“I was walking down the lane and saw a young man with a knife and very large bag and he was filling it up with garlic.” She assumed he was a restaurateur and asked him where he was based.
“He said up near Bodmin, which is about seven miles away. I asked, wouldn’t it be easier to get your garlic from closer to home? Why are you here? He laughed and said: ‘We’ve destroyed it all.’ I gave him a look and told him: ‘Try not to destroy our garlic.’”
Fisher had what she calls a “rant” on a community Facebook page calling for people to “share and share alike”. But she said: “The feed went a little bit bonkers. It touched a nerve. It’s very trendy to have wild garlic pesto and things like that, but foraging on that scale is not right.
“There are big holes, gashes in this lane of garlic, which is usually very beautiful. It hasn’t even come into flower yet so it’s not had a chance to reproduce. It’s not coming back this year, who knows if it will next.”
The laws around foraging are complex but, in general, it is legal to forage for personal consumption but not for commercial gain.
After the post appeared on Facebook, people from Bodmin got in touch to say their garlic – which is good in soups and salads as well as to make pesto – had been vanishing, too.
Another Lostwithiel resident, Joannie Muskett, said she had come across two people, one in his 20s, one in his 50s, gathering garlic. “The younger guy had a knife 6-8ins long that he was using and they had two full clear bin bags with the garlic squashed into it. We may need to start patrols to stop them.”
Colin Martin, the Cornwall councillor for Lostwithiel, said he was worried that the foragers might be being exploited by the people they were harvesting the garlic for. “They might be making a pittance and not know what they are doing is illegal. They might be the victim of someone pulling the strings.
“The feeling here is that if anyone sees it happening they should either consider speaking to the individual or take a vehicle registration number and contact the police.”
