THIS IS SERIES 5 WARDROBE CRISIS #SHARETHEPODCASTMIC YOUR GUEST HOST THIS WEEK IS NIDALA BARKER, AND SHE’S IN CONVERSATION WITH KOBI BLOOM.

ABOUT YOUR HOST: Nidala Barker is an Aboriginal woman from the Djugun people of the Kimberley. A singer-songwriter with a powerful message, she uses her music to encourage environmental activism and social justice, and in particular, as she says, to begin “shifting the way we think and speak about my fellow Aboriginal Australians.”

“Nidala has a Master’s degree in Sustainability and a thriving veggie patch. Last year, she self-recorded her first single - called Howl at the Moon - in her garden shed, sound-proofed with bags of potting mix. Read more about what makes her tick in our interview with her here. Watch out for her EP, Colours of My People, coming in April.

EPISODE 137 FEATURES KOBI BLOOM

Who else talks to their plants? This week's joyful episode is a love letter to what we grow - in gardens, allotments, veggie patches and pots on our windowsills the world over. But also what grows wild - in the woods, hedgerows, fields and scrub, the verges by the freeways, even the cracks in city pavements.

Kobi is a regenerative forager, gardener and weeds-appreciator based in Byron Bay, Australia.

Up for discussion: How can learning more about plants, and their wonder, help us heal the planet? What exactly is a regenerative farmer or gardener (and how can you be be one)? What happens if we donʼt pull out the weeds? What can we do about food waste? And why is compost so often the answer to life's big questions?

But first, here's Nidala singing good morning to her veggie patch... you could not make this up; but she does - every day, it's a new song. Ah, told you this one was a joy.

NOTES

“WORMS I SEE YOU THERE, WIGGLING IN THE AIR…MARIGOLD, I WAS TOLD, I PROBABLY WOULDN’T SEE YOU HERE, BUT LOOK AT YOU NOW!” Nidala makes these songs up on the spot, inspired by her audience - all the beautiful things growing in her garden.

WE LIKE FLOWERS You only have to look at how they storm up the Instagram algorithm, right? But why do they make us happy? By triggering dopamine. Kobi recommends this quick read to get you thinking…

YES, TREES TALK! Kobi mentions the complex network of mycelium and plant roots under the soil. Want to understand the science? “Forests aren’t simply collections of trees; they are complex systems with hubs and networks that overlap and connect trees and allow them to communicate.” Watch Suzanne Simmard’s TED Talk, “How Trees Talk to Each Other”, below:

FORAGING is searching for wild food resources. As a child, Clare remembers picking the blackberries which grew in abundance in the hedgerows where she grew up. But Lucy Siegle was warning a decade ago in the Guardian that while it “may be eating as nature intended, but there are legal and ethical limits to raiding your local wild larder.” In theory, it’s a lovely, back-to-basics idea - but you have to do your homework. In Australia, for example, you may need a licence to pick native plants from the wild. “It’s one thing for Indigenous people with a deep understanding of what they’re doing to pick for their own use. Quite another for people to forage without understanding the possible problems of pulling up anything they see. It’s possible they may take a unique and irreplaceable specimen from the wild, and it’s worth remembering that some native plants are poisonous.” VIA Broadsheet.

Fancy a (responsible) forage in the UK? BBC Good Food gets you started here. You might also, as Kobi suggests, extend your definition of foraging to include unloved and left-behind human-made resources - roadside furniture, for example, and preloved, discarded clothes.

“HEY! WHO ARE YOU CALLING WEED?” Before you yank out that pesky “weed”, remember what Nidala sings: ““IF WE LEARN FROM THE ROOTS, HOLDING THINGS STEADY” Now ask youself: who deemed this plant a weed?! What might its roots be holding in place, or connecting to, or assisting beneath the surface? Kobi talks about the WONDER OF WEEDS, their resilience, beauty and positive properties. Weeds are just plants we give a bad name.

This recent Forbes article by Daphne Ewing-Chow expands: “Weeds provide food and habitat for wildlife. Dandelions for example, attract beneficial ladybugs and provide early spring pollen as their food. Weeds also protect soils from the sun, preventing erosion and dryness, while conditioning and fiberizing it and bringing minerals from subsoil to topsoil.

They provide a service to ecosystems that are vulnerable to the effects of climate change, particularly in the case of droughts, and because weeds are deep feeders with long roots, they allow plants that are less resilient to feed from the surface, or long rooted domesticated plants to access food deeper in the soil by breaking up hardpans and increasing aeration.” Meanwhile, top chefs are rethinking weeds as desirable ingredients…Read the rest here.

COMPOST APPRECIATION Beloved American poet Walt Whitman published his poem THIS COMPOST in his 1867 book Leaves of Grass. While it starts off gloomy (lost love! death! decay!), here’s an uplifting passage from it:

“Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person—yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs,
The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green leaves,
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in the dooryards,
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead.”
What chemistry! indeed…

Aussies, COMMUNITY GARDENS AUSTRALIA is a community-based non-profit association working to link people interested in community gardening around Australia.

It provides a platform for people interested in city farms, community gardening, food gardening in schools and other community food systems, and helps people share their stories, knowledge and ideas. Find them (and find a garden near you!) here.

BIG THANKS TO PHOTOGRAPHER LUKI OKEEFE FOR THE BEAUTIFUL PORTRAIT OF KOBI.

Thank you for listening to Wardrobe Crisis - we couldn’t do it without you! Please keep sharing your favourite Episodes.

Love, Clare & the team xx