“Sometimes I’ve done talks on foraging. It’s like, ‘What have plants done for you today?’ And often the question comes back around beauty, and like I said earlier, beauty is high on my agenda, it’s great. And there are some real basics. Plants provide us with food, with oxygen… basics around shelter, around clothing, around bedding.” - Rachel Lambert, forager, maker & coach. Found Wild Walks South West Based in West Cornwall, just minutes from the sea, Rachel Lambert has spent more than 30 years exploring the relationship between people and plants. Through Wild Walks South West, she brings people onto beaches, coastal paths, hedgerows and footpaths to discover the food, fibres, medicine, beauty and stories held within the landscapes around them. Rachel shares how her own relationship with plants began in childhood, from picking blackberries to gathering plants whilst camping with her family, then in her early twenties, discovered plants could be foraged for food, medicine and making that changed the way she saw the world. What was once simply a landscape transformed into a living community of plants with names, qualities, uses and relationships. We explore the sensory pleasure of foraging through tasting wild foods, gathering seaweed along the Cornish coast and noticing the textures, colours and forms of plants can transform an everyday walk. Rachel recalls the moment she began to see dandelions differently: not simply as familiar flowers, but as roots, leaves and flowers to cook with and stems that could be gathered, dried and woven. She describes how working with wild fibres making cordage and weaving plants is a meditative and embodied process with a different kind of attention that connects us not only with our own bodies, but with other people and the living materials around us. Her work with plants also opens questions about shelter, home and belonging: what does it mean to feel held by the natural world? Reciprocity forms a thread across the conversation as she describes how plants give us food, oxygen, clothing, shelter, soil and beauty, yet our modern culture often makes this relationship invisible. She regularly invites her clients to consider: what would you like to give back to nature? and allows the question to marinate over time which invites a deeper awareness of current, expected or desired relationships with nature. Rachel leaves us with a simple invitation: to pause, stand still, look closely at the plants around us and notice their colours, textures, shapes and the often-overlooked diversity of the living world. Bio Rachel Lambert is a socially and environmentally-engaged artist, forager and artisan maker using heritage craft techniques and foraged fibres. She has been teaching people to forage since 2007 and is the author of four books on wild food and cooking. Her book Seaweed foraging in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly won the Gourmand World Cookbook award in the category of fish (2016) and Wild and Sweet won the British Book Design and Production award (Illustrated Lifestyle (2022)). In 2025 she started to explore foraging for fibres having initially trained as a visual artist over 30 years ago and has recently exhibited locally and nationally using local plants to create functional and sculptural objects. Her work background spans play-work and community development and in 2010 I qualified as a Somatic Bodywork and Movement Therapist and still draws deeply on these body-awareness skills when facilitating experiences with people in nature. From 2022-2025 she worked as a Learning Facilitator for The School of Social Entrepreneurs where she honed my coaching skills. Instagram Facebook Pinterest Youtube Resources The Fluid Nature of Being: Embodied Practices for Healing and Wholeness Wild Basketry: Making Baskets and Natural Cordage from Foraged Plants School for Social Entrepreneurs To find out more: www.rootedrisingpodcast.com
