Lawn: a love story
Our #EatNZKaitaki Sophie Merkens is a photographer, writer and gardener. She shares a beautiful story about her appreciation for the diversity of species & life that exits on her beloved lawn.
It started, most probably, with Covid-19, as many beginnings and obsessions around the globe did. Those of us fortunate enough to live in Aotearoa, an island buoyed by seas, went into lockdown, watching the world and anxiously waiting to see if the virus would reach our communities. For the first long lockdown, I bunkered down at my folk’s place, along with my paternal grandma of (then) 95 years. My work had stopped abruptly and I quickly discovered there are only so many games of scrabble you can play in a day, especially when grandma cheats. After I’d organised the spice drawer, deep cleaned the kitchen, filed my tax receipts, frenzied through the dusty boxes in the attic, and sent my family mad, I finally joined Mum in the garden.
I want to preface all this by saying that I was and am privileged to have access to land. Not just access to land but spray free and cultivated land. My mother, a gardener, grows bananas, subtropical fruits, nuts, and most vegetables suited to this climate. She also lets the weeds be a part of the garden.
In an effort to find calm and distraction, we began foraging together. First, it was the olives on the fence line. We balanced on the fence, filled our bowls (with permission), then spent hours preparing the olives for brine at the dining room table. Next up were the button mushrooms on our regular loop walk, much faster to prepare but less predictable to harvest. There was much to forage on our walks but it was at home, in the garden, that I found the most curious of discoveries. The tree in the front yard? A Peruvian pepper tree. I’d lived most of my teenage years in this house with this tree, walking past it multiple times a day, but I’d never noticed its distinct leaves nor its ripe pink peppercorns. I harvested the peppercorns and left them to dry in the sun before pouring them into the pepper grinder. Something was brewing inside of me. Then I looked at the lawn.
Harvesting olives during the first lockdown.
Peruvian Pink Peppercorns
Those two key ingredients of time and curiosity had me looking at the lawn with new eyes, admiring the ‘weeds’ amidst blades of grass. Soon I was adding dandelion’s bitter leaves to salads, brewing up flowers into mellow teas, and even contemplating digging up the stubborn roots. (My maternal grandmother dries the roots and makes a dandelion ‘coffee’ but as a coffee purist/fiend I left ours in the ground.)
Dandelion leaves and flowers
What began with time and forced isolation became a childlike enthusiasm to discover what was growing all around me. I knew the obvious plants, the veggies in my mother’s suburban garden - but it was the weeds that got me. Oh they got me good. Made me an ally of my mother’s. You see, my darling father is a mathematician, and although he has his creative quirks, he likes things straight and organised. He does not like weeds growing along the driveway, nor overgrown gardens, and definitely not overgrown grass. He had no hope of course, now that lockdown saw us as 2-1, a mother and daughter obsessing over weeds versus a father unable to pull them up, let alone mow the lawn. That lawn became my playground, full of dandelions, dock, plantain, clovers, cleavers and other edible treasures. Everyday more lawn made its way into our meals. My zest for these delicious weeds increased.
Chickweed and Dandelion leaves aka. lawn meals
Lockdown lifted and I found myself travelling the length of Aotearoa writing Grow, a book about foragers and food connected wāhine. My whole world expanded: seaweed, seafood, homemade sea salt from pristine coasts, edible weeds, mushrooms (wild and cultivated), ferments, foraged bounties. My foodie world exploded. There was no turning back.
Foraging for watercress whilst on the road
A foraged seaweed salad
Meeting Horopito
And then a second long lockdown, this time in winter, where I was tucked away in a (non waterproof) cabin on Aotea (Great Barrier Island). I hadn’t planned on getting stuck on the isle, rather I went to edit the above book. But lockdown caught me again, this time with two plant loving women in my ‘bubble’. Combined with my love of lawn, the previous five months on the road learning and obsessing about food, two wild women who were my only company for one hundred days, and an untamed beach at my doorstep (literally)… my childlike enthusiasm ramped up. I now had toddler-in-the-morning energy for the plants around us. Our lawn had wild chickweed, bittercress and nasturtiums to munch on and whip up into a pesto. Onion weed began to flower. I munched on the garlicky petals as I explored, then dug up the bulbs to caramelise for toasties. The garden was full of weeds and this time they were all appreciated, no one wanted to mow them, they were our free food source. Just outside our weedy (worshipped) wonderland was the beach. Oruawharo (Medlands beach), in all her glory. When the tide was low and the seas calm, I’d collect kūtai (mussels) and vivid sea lettuce in the rockpools for special-occasion meals. Oruawharu had green dunes dotted with kōkihi and horokaka, offering their salty freshness to our meals. When my fridge and cupboards became bare (my weekly shop was limited to what could be wrestled into bicycle bags) I feasted on kōkihi, brightening up my last cup of rice or plain pasta, adding local nourishment and edible connection.
Aotea cabin (quaint though not weatherproof)
Lawn delights - onion weed, nasturtiums, cleaver
Fast forward to today. We’re not in lockdowns anymore but I still find wonder in my backyard, sometimes daily. Now living in a tiny (tiny, tiny) cabin in the bush in Piha, on the wild west coast of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, I have no lawn to lust after. Instead I delight in learning and meeting native plants. There are koromiko leaves to brew for stomach ailments and mānuka for soothing herbal tea. After a good rain and dose of the humidity that cloaks this city, hakeke mushrooms appear, like magic, on the māhoe tree just ten steps from my front door. Kareao (supplejack vines) twist through the ngahere and I delight, with the same enthusiasm as a child on Christmas morning, in munching on the vine’s fresh juicy tips. Hangehange grows in abundance, though I’ve learnt the hard way not to eat too many leaves, as they’re also used to produce a dye (my teeth and tongue eventually faded from deep black). In lieu of a lawn, the plants encroaching on my driveway have become a banquet of taste and learning. Only today I met kowaowao (hound’s tongue fern), and spent the morning nibbling on her fresh fronds. I have my eye on the harakeke, waiting until they burst in seed, some of which I’ll harvest to add to baking. My driveway has become my culinary playground.
My delicious driveway
Koromiko tea
The more I learn, the more I realise I have to learn, which is an exciting feeling. Through food I’ve harnessed my childlike whimsy and deepened my respect for the world around us. Yet somehow, I have a feeling this journey has just begun.
See more from Sophie over on Instagram @sophiemerkens and order a copy of her book Grow here.
This is a post in collaboration with #FOODDIVERSITYDAY taking place on Jan 13th in the UK. Learn more here.