Walk My Land Service

Gardens, fields, hedgerows and woods are bursting with plants that are edible and therapeutic. You just need to learn how to safely identify and harvest them. I will introduce you to these vital skills.

  • Learn about your own land so that you can use it!
  • Discover what is growing under your own feet!
  • Have the confidence to use your own plants safely.
  • Ask an experienced herbalist and forager your questions.
  • Discover easily recognisable plants that you did not know are edible and/or therapeutic.
  • Learn the nutritional value of some common wild plants.
  • Have this info and these vital skills for life!

Did you know that many wild and cultivated plants are edible and therapeutic? Wild plants such as meadowsweet and sorrel make tasty additions to the dinner table as do some cultivated plants including certain varieties of lavender and roses. Plants are not ornaments! Learn to identify plants that are safe to use at home. Enrich your life, expand your palate, enjoy the process!

Do you have your own garden or land (field, wild space etc.)
Would you love to be able to use the plants that are on your land but are afraid to because you don’t know which plants are poisonous and which are edible?
Would you love to know what’s growing on your land?

Actively using fresh wild and cultivated plants can help to improve the general health of people and animals. It also cuts down on using imported foods & drinks, thus helping to reduce environmental damage. Have a farm? Want to know what is growing there that you can use to improve the health of your animals? I can introduce you to this too.

Client Testimonial

Julie Randall booked this service in 2014. Here’s what she had to say about it:

“My mother and I first had the privilege of meeting Vivienne at a talk on herbal remedies for winter ailments last year. Inspired by this energetic and animated presentation we asked her to come and take us on a herbal adventure on my parents organic farm located outside of the village of Kinvara in Co Galway. Vivienne brought every inch of the route around the land alive by mesmerising our group with information on the multitude of plants and herbs that abound in that space. We were allowed the opportunity to listen to all perspectives on the nature of the herbal flora that featured on our walk; from its composition on a chemical level and how each herb compares to its synthetic counterpart on the current pharmaceutical market, through to its roots in heritage and folklore. Though Vivienne was not aware we had in the group a nano-physicist, a pharmacist, a journalist, a homeopath and nurse! All of whom were held captive by her passion and evident knowledge and respect for her subject. She brings the smallest patch of green alive with her pure, energetic and knowledgeable insight. We couldn’t recommend her highly enough for a day out!” – Julie Randall & Julia Waites.

What this service includes:

I will come to your garden/land on an agreed date between May-Sept.

I will take you on a walk on your land and will identify plants that are edible and can be used therapeutically e.g. wild plants, cultivated plants, trees, shrubs, weeds etc. (please note that it will not be possible to identify absolutely every single plant on your land…see Terms & Conditions for full details)

I will provide identification labels to tie on to some plants if possible (e.g. trees and shrubs)

I will allow you to film parts of the walk and info to help you to safely identify plants.

I will spend a maximum of 3 hours at your land (if you have a very large area of land or farm and want me to provide surveys for all of it then please email me directly to arrange a specific quote for you: info@theherbalhub.com)

Within a week of the identification walk I will send you a report with the following:

  • A list of plants that I identified on your land.
  • Photos of the plants to help you identify them.
  • Basic information about the plants.
  • Instructions on how to use the plants e.g. how to extract them.
  • Some food recipes so that you can use some of the plants as foods.
  • An identification check-list to help you to identify edible & therapeutic plants and help to prevent mis-identifying plants.
  • A safe usage check-list to provide you with the assurance that you need to use your plants with confidence but also to recognise when to seek professional medical help.
  • A list of recommended books on foraging so that you can happily experiment away in your kitchen.

Advance and follow-up service

Please let me know in advance if there is a specific area, topic or plant that you particularly want to learn about and I will do my best to cover this for you if it is suitable and/or possible. If I don’t know about it and can’t help you then I will tell you and recommend someone else who can. Unidentified plants: If there is a plant that we see on your walk that you desperately want to identify but I do not recognise then I will endeavour to find out about it for you or pass you on to someone else who should be able to help to identify it.

What this service is not

It is not a medical consultation.
I cannot give specific medical advice during the ‘Walk My Land’ survey. I can give general advice about including wild plants and herbs in your diet and life to improve general health. I am qualified to do herbal medicine consultations and prescribe specific herbs to help to treat specific illnesses. If you have a specific ailment or illness that you would like to address with herbs then you are welcome to book me for a medical consultation on the same day. I could do the consultation before or after the land survey. If possible and if it is safe then I will show you herbs that you can use yourself from your own land to help you to treat your ailment. If this is not possible, then I will post on your prescription. Please note that for basic safety reasons I must always carry out an in-depth medical consultation before I can recommend a course of treatment for a specific medical complaint. While herbs are of course natural, they contain potent substances that may interact with any pharmaceutical medicines that you are taking or may not be suitable for you for some other reason in your medical history. However, you have my promise that I will not ever ‘sell you a prescription’ if a suitable and safe remedy is growing under your nose where you can access it for free!

It is not a guarantee to identify every single plant and tree on your land.
I am not a botanist so I cannot and will not be able to identify every single plant and tree on your land. There are millions of wild and cultivated plants in the world and I do not know all of them. However I am an experienced, qualified herbalist. I have been teaching for 11 years and taking guided foraging walks for over 7 years. Because my walks are so interesting people started to ask me to lead identification walks on their land and write reports for them so that they could discover what is on their land. Feedback from this has been great. People are delighted to be able to use some of the plants that are growing around them. I am now offering this service openly because there is such a demand for it.

This service does not include foraging for mushrooms and fungi.
This area is very specialised because the risk of misidentification and poisoning yourself is very high! If you want to learn about mushroom foraging then I recommend that you contact Bill O’Dea at www.mushroomstuff.com – He is a mushroom foraging expert (he also featured on the RTE show Corrigan Cooks Naturally). I am not!

General Info

Not all gardens and land will be suitable for surveys.

Land that is suitable:
Ideally your garden or land will not have been sprayed with any chemical treatments. It will have some uncultivated areas.

Land that is not suitable:
It is unlikely that we will find many edible and therapeutic plants in gardens that have large areas covered in cement or grit, have been treated with weed-killer, lawn treatments and other chemicals or re-planted with non-native cultivated plants from garden centres. Please contact me before booking if you would like to arrange a walk in your garden but are concerned about this.

Fields that have been recently treated with weed-killers, insecticides, pesticides etc. are also not suitable.
For safety reasons we won’t be able to eat the plants from there. If you have treated your land with any of these chemicals but would like to learn more about the plants that naturally grow there and have an identification walk then please contact me. It may be possible, given time, for you to start to use these plants if you stop applying chemical treatments to your land.

Size of garden/land.
You do not need to have a large garden or piece of land to ensure that lots of plants grow there. You’d be surprised at the wide variety that can grow in a small space. I’d love to open your eyes to this! The most important factor in there being variety in your land is that you are not applying weed-killers.

Not sure if this is suitable for your land?
Please ask me. Contact me at info@theherbalhub.com or phone me on 00 353 (0)86 8899168 and we can discuss your circumstances.

Costs

The full price of a ‘Walk My Land’ consultation and report is €600.

Payment Options:
This can be paid in full at the time of booking or in two instalments of €300. The first instalment is paid at the time of booking. The second instalment is due to be paid on the day of the land survey. Payments can be accepted in advance via credit card, debit card, Pay Pal, cheque and postal order. Payments can be accepted on the day by cash, cheque or postal order. You can pay by credit or debit card by clicking the ‘ADD TO CART’ button. This will take you to a Pay Pal payment page. You do not need to have a Pay Pal account to use this. On this page click the ‘CHECK OUT’ button (i.e. not the ‘Check out with Pay Pal’ button). On the next page click ‘DON’T HAVE A PAY PAL ACCOUNT’ at the bottom right of the page. This option will allow you to pay by debit or credit card without using a Pay Pal account.

Once you have booked and paid then I will be in touch to arrange a date and time for the survey (surveys take place on an agreed date between May-Sept).

Off-set the cost of these consultations by inviting your friends!
You are welcome to invite friends and family to attend these walks (up to a maximum of 10 people in total including the person who books the consultation) and you can charge them a fee for attending e.g. €20 per head. Please only do this if you are happy to have other people take up your time. Remember that this consultation is for you on your land. Make sure that you get what you want from it, don’t let guests take that away from you. The more people, the more questions (although this is often interesting)! Please note that attendees are not allowed to video the walks and that the reports are copyrighted.

Receive discounts when booking more identification walks:
Different plants come out at different times of year. If you would like me to come back to your land at another time of year to identify more plants that you can use then I should be able to offer you’re a discounted package. Please contact me on info@theherbalhub.com to arrange this.

At the moment this service is only available in Ireland. If you live outside of Ireland and would like to book me to do this service for you where you live then please email me with the title: “Walk My Land Abroad”.

Terms and Conditions

Size of land:
The above details and prices of the Land Surveys are based on me spending a total max of 3 hours on the land on the day of the land survey. If you have a very large area of land that you would like to be surveyed and think that this will take longer than 3 hours to do then please contact me and I will provide a bespoke package and quote for you.

Change of date:
If you need to change the date of your scheduled land survey then you can do so free of charge up to 5 weeks before the original date that was scheduled for your survey. However please think carefully before changing the date. The foraging season is limited and Vivienne Campbell is booked up months in advance so she may not have the availability to offer you another date for the same year.

Refunds/change of mind/cancellations:
Full refunds are available to people who cancel up to 4 weeks before the scheduled date of the Land Survey (i.e. if you paid in full at the time of booking then €600 will be refunded to you. If you chose to pay by instalments and have only paid 1 x instalment of €300 then this amount will be refunded to you. If you have paid both instalments then the full €600 will be refunded to you). For cancellations received between 2-4 weeks before the scheduled date of the survey a refund of 50% of the total consultation fee (i.e. €300) will be refunded. If you chose to pay by instalments and have only paid one instalment of €300 then this is 50% of the total cost of the consultation fee so it will not be refunded. No refunds are given for cancellations less than 2 weeks before the scheduled date of the Land Survey.

Vivienne Campbell does not accept liability for people misidentifying plants and any mishaps that may result from misidentifying any plants.
Vivienne Campbell will provide clear safety information about plants. It is the responsibility of the individual to follow these instructions. If in doubt, then don’t consume the plant!

Your land report:
Please note that the written report that Vivienne will produce for you will be copyrighted and as such will be subject to copyright law.

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