Lieve Galle: 25 years of rooted expertise
I am Lieve, Wild ‘wyf’
and plant whisperer
I grew up in ‘Thistle street’ and was partly raised by cuckoo flowers, weeping willows, dandelions and crab apples.
For more than 25 years, I have been translating plant stories to human ears with endless passion.
As a young woman, navigating the human world didn’t always come easily to me. But the moment I discovered a leaflet for herbalism school, my focus shifted. I found my anchor. In 2002, I graduated as a certified Herbalist (EANG — European Academy for Natural Healthcare) and as an official Nature Guide (The Nature Academy of Natuurpunt). I immediately founded Wild Plant Forager, determined to help others decode the green blur around them and restore their innate connection to the plants.
Have you ever wondered
what it would be like to work
with the plants surrounding you,
just like our ancestors did?
I just couldn’t get enough and kept immersing myself in the power of plants. How endlessly delightful to get to know their names, qualities and habitats!
Tea sommelier, hydrosol therapy, algotherapy, plant-based food … they all inspired me. One great plant adventure!
How many edible wild plants can you sum up in your neighbourhood?
Or is it all a big green blur to you?
Early in my career, the artist collective Irma Firma invited me to join their urban intervention project, ‘How To Survive In A City’. We set out to introduce commuters to the wild food growing between the paving stones of big cities like Brussels, Antwerp and Amsterdam.
Watching corporate professionals in tailored suits drop to their knees to examine common daisies for a soup was an image I will never forget. It proved to me that our sensory connection to the earth is never truly lost.
In 2007, an invitation to speak at the Strawberry Moon Gathering (a gathering of indigenous people passing on traditional knowledge from (grand)mother to (grand)child) in Lily Dale, USA, turned my life upside down.
Listening to the profound way they kept their relationship with the land alive made me realize how disconnected we have become in modern Europe. We had completely forgotten the names and thythm of our own local plants. I realized that my responsibility was to help rebuild that lost relationship with the plants back home. I resigned the next day from the health food store where I worked to become a full-time herbalist and wild plant teacher. At the time, in Belgium, people thought it was completely unachievable.
But I felt it was time for a subversively radical change.
From 2007 onwards, my practical expertise led me back to academia . I was appointed as an official examiner for the final graduation projects of the EANG Herbalist Training, evaluating the next generation of professional herbalists.
In 2009, I expanded my academic role by becoming a lecturer in Natural Philosophy and in Natural Medicine at the EANG training institute, spending over 12 years teaching how human health is non-linear and deeply embedded within a larger ecosystem.
In 2012, recognizing that structured, long-term training in foraging simply did not exist in Europe, I designed the very first year-long foraging mentorship program in Belgium.
The response was overwhelming. Hundreds of students signed up, leading to a permanent waiting list.
This work allowed me to teach in extraordinary places across the landscape, from permaculture gardens and shifting sand dunes to ancient forests and even the historic lands of a medieval abbey.
By 2018, I found the working environment of my dreams: an idyllic little island in Drongen (Ghent), surrounded by an old arm of the river Leie, where my intensive, live training programs remain anchored today.
Do you feel at home in the landscape that surrounds you?
It’s an experience that I wish everyone could have.
2020. All my lessons were cancelled. And I had a waiting list of more than 1600 people for my course in foraging — a list that kept on growing. And suddenly I realised that I would never be able to catch up with that list since I only had room for 50 to 60 students every year. I needed to do something, because it was time to increase the positive impact of wild plants on the world.
A year-long online course in foraging
for people who don’t like to sit behind their screens,
but who want to go out
and discover plants,
would that be possible?
The answer turned out to be a loud yes!
The year-long online course in foraging took place for the first time in 2022.
2020-2022: Thanks to the power of a wholesome plant-based diet AND wild herbs, I managed to put my auto immune disease into remission.
Because I always tend to sink my teeth into things, I completely immersed myself in this. After voraciously reading a large amount of books about the subject, I obtained a.o. a degree in Plant-Based Nutrition at eCornell University.
And hey, when you eat plant-based food,
you are able to answer the question
‘but what on earth
can you still eat then?’
very creatively as a forager:
steamed shoots of common hogweed, thistle juice, risotto of stinging nettle … After 30 years of not eating animals I discovered that all further cliché questions end here :)
In 2022 I decided to challenge my imposter syndrome and finally publish the manuscript that had been lying in my drawer for 10 years, and that everyone kept asking me about.
Quite funny really that that was such an unnerving adventure to me, since I already had a lot of experience in writing articles for international specialist journals, and as a co-author of herbals in English and Dutch.
But my very own book … that turned out to be a really big step for me, giving me quite a few minor panic attacks. Fortunately there were so many sympathetic supporters on the sidelines that I kept going.
‘In Het Wild Geplukt’ (Foraged in the Wild)
was born, the book for nature lovers
who want to start working
with edible wild plants
in an accessible and transparant way
But you know what? It’s not about me.
It’s about the plants. And about you.
I have been so fortunate to inspire thousands of people to give plants a more prominent place in their lives. In such a way that puts sustainability and safety first.
Are you next?
Start working on your plant blindness
Wild herb wisdom
is an essential skill,
today and in the future
