Successfully manage invasive plants while enjoying their nutritional value.

Course Overview

Join professional forager and New Jersey backyard gardener, Tama Matsuoka Wong, in a workshop on foraging invasive plants. She will discuss how many of these plants are used culinarily and medicinally in their cultures of origin, particularly in Asia. This skills based workshop will demonstrate how to work with and cull invasive plants to control their spread in the landscape while enjoying their nutritional and flavorful properties.

About The Instructor

Tama Matsuoka Wong is a forager, weed eater, meadow doctor , lawyer and mother of three. She authored Foraged Flavor, a wild food field guide and cookbook (Clarkson Potter, June 2012), nominated for a James Beard award. She speaks to diverse audiences such as the James Beard House, Garden Club of America, the American Museum of Natural History, Slow Food, schools and has hosted foraging events, from Charleston to Seattle to Toronto. She supplies local wild foods to a select number of chefs and independent food institutions in the NYC area and collaborates with conservation groups and organic farmers on wild farming and foraging. After graduating from Harvard Law School and serving more than 25 years as a financial services lawyer in Tokyo, New York and Hong Kong, she returned to New Jersey and rediscovered her passion for the natural world. She launched Meadows and More LLC to connect experts in the field of meadow restoration, botany and wildlife with people in the community. In 2007 she was named Steward of the Year by the New Jersey Forest Service.

Tama has been featured in CBS Sunday Morning “Our war against weeds” as well as the NY Times “Finding Flavor in the Weeds”, the WSJ, Edible Manhattan, Bloomberg Stealth lawyers, NPR Science Friday, the Leonard Lopate show, among others. She gave a 2013 TedX Manhattan talk on “How I did less and ate better, thanks to weeds”.

Tama lives in Hunterdon County New Jersey with her husband and their three daughters. It is her hope that everyone can unwind and reconnect with the places we came from by rediscovering wild plants and the deliciousness of “weeds.” Now, more than ever, it is time to look at what grows around us through the lens of sustainability, health and deliciousness!

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