Meet Chloe: The Biochemist Behind the Foraging Walks
The first plant I remember identifying on my own was a stinging nettle. I was about eight, on a camping trip in the New Forest with my parents, and I had been told that the fuzzy-looking leaves would sting me. I touched one anyway, of course. But what stuck with me was not the sting — it was the fact that the same plant that hurt me could also be made into soup, tea, and rope. That contradiction, the idea that something familiar and dismissed could turn out to be useful and complex, is what led me here.
I am Chloe. I trained at Oxford in molecular and cellular biochemistry, and I spent over twenty years teaching chemistry before I started running foraging workshops. I live in the Kent countryside with my husband Ben, our three children, and our whippet Willow, who comes on most of the walks and is entirely indifferent to the nutritional properties of anything she sniffs.
My background is in biochemistry, not botany. That matters in a specific way. When I teach you to identify a plant, I am not relying on pattern recognition or visual memory alone — I am drawing on an understanding of what the plant is doing at a cellular level, why it produces the compounds it does, and what that tells you about its family, its lookalikes, and its effects on your body. It is the same rigour I brought to teaching chemistry for two decades: the question is not just “what is this?” but “how do I know?”
That is the difference I care about. Traditional foraging knowledge is real, valuable, and worth respecting — I learn from it constantly. But what I add is the ability to explain why a plant is safe, why it is not, and what the evidence actually says about its nutritional and medicinal properties. When you leave one of my workshops, I want you to understand the mechanism, not just the name.
I started the walks because I kept having the same conversation. Women would read the blog, try a recipe, and then say: “I wish I could come and do this with you in person.” So I do. The walks are small, guided, and practical. You leave with a harvest, the confidence to use it, and an understanding of the science behind what you picked.
If you would like to know more, the FAQ covers the practical details, or you can email me directly at chloe@chloearchard.com.
If you would like to be notified when workshop dates are announced, you can join the waitlist here.
