Wild about Garlic – If you are out walking in the local woods around Huddersfield over the next month, you may pick up a faint but definite smell of garlic.

Mar 22 2008 by Andrew Flynn, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

It probably isn’t the aromas of the local Italian pizza restaurant drifting across the area but one of our native woodland plants, known as ramsons or wild garlic, allium ursinum. With its early showing of broad leaves, almost like small hosta foliage, and its upright stem,s with white, typical allium flowers, it forms huge carpets, giving off a soft, delicate Garlic aroma for us to enjoy or otherwise.

The leaves can be added to mixed salad leaves to give an extra dimension of flavour or can be added to stews, soups and sauces in spring, whilst they are fresh and flavourful.

Like all alliums, wild garlic grows from a bulb each spring and the resulting seeds from the flowers are then distributed around the woods by wood ants as they make their nests.

So, if you have a deep shaded corner of your garden that you want to fill with something but don’t necessarily want lots of colour, treat yourself to some ramsons for the garden and have the added benefit of being able to use the foliage in the kitchen as well. Under the Wildlife and Countryside Act you must not dig up bulbs from the wild and will need to find a source of seeds or bulbs from a domestic garden.

Visit your local garden centre and look out for other summer flowering alliums as well, although most of these will need an open, sunny location to perform well, unlike the wild garlic that prefers a shady, woodland environment.