For Studio Neon chef Aaron Teece, who’s based in Sydney’s Redfern, foraging is an easy means of keeping up to date with what’s in season – and offers some much-needed nature time. “You never stop noticing where ingredients are and you get into a habit of finding them without even looking,” he says, having discovered warrigal greens, wood sorrel and nasturtiums (like the ones in the photo above) all growing within a minute’s walk of his house. His hot tips for Sydney foragers: dandelion is one of the easiest edible plants to find there, and the length of Sydney’s Edgecliff Road is lined with huge lemon myrtle trees. Growing up near Byron Bay where “you could pick breakfast on your walk to school”, Teece is keen to help others identify wild foods by posting what he’s finding on Instagram. Right now, he’s travelling through Europe, but expect to see more foraged goods on his return, alongside snaps of the dishes he creates using them – like Hawkesbury squid with peas, topped with nasturtium leaves (pictured) and robinia flowers.

Should mobile cocktail cart Trolley’d turn up at your party, you’re likely to be treated to drinks prepped with hand-plucked native ingredients. Owners Christopher Thomas and Byron Woolfrey are keen foragers, using their edible discoveries to make tipples. Lemon myrtle was the first one they came across. “Our eyes were opened to the abundance of food growing all around us that just falls to the ground and gets washed into the drains every year,” says Woolfrey. “A whole world of edible tastiness was brought to our attention.” The pair continued to build their foraging knowledge with the help of Diego Bonetto’s Instagram account (@theweedyone) and the #wildfood and #wildsydney feeds. These days, they’re sharing their own finds on the social platform, such as wattleseed, quandongs and riberries or lilly pilllies (pictured here). “We love to spread the word and help pick up a bit of lost knowledge from our ancestors. It’s time to take control back, and not just rely on big supermarket and pharmaceutical chains to dictate our diets,” Woolfrey says. Their favourite cocktail of the season? Lemon myrtle lemonades with riberry infused gin. “So refreshing when it hits your lips over summer.”

“I think that for everyone, even if to a small degree, foraging starts as a child. Someone tells you that you can suck the little drop of sweet mustardy nectar from the tail end of a nasturtium flower or nibble on some sea lettuce, and you are off,” says Oliver Brown. He started his blog, Forager’s Year, to document his adventures searching for wild foods in Sydney and further out of town in the mountains. He’s ended up sharing the fruits of his expeditions on Instagram, too – macadamias, loquats, white mulberries (like the ones in the picture, above) and more. “[Instagram] is quite a good way for some kind of community of foragers to exist – people who are otherwise often widely separated,” he says. If he had to pick a favourite wild edible, it’d have to be the saffron milk cap mushroom, which can be found in New South Wales pine forests. “Mushroom foraging gets right at the heart of wild food gathering – you go out into a beautiful clean environment, and there pluck rare culinary treats that have literally just risen from the earth itself.”

Chefs and best friends Elijah Holland and Bojan Grdanovic were already collecting wild herbs, flowers and mushrooms from around New South Wales to use at their restaurants, so they decided to make a business of it. Natures Pick now supplies wild seasonal ingredients to some of Sydney’s best restaurants – think lilly pillies and wood sorrel for the likes of Aria, Pilu and Ormeggio at The Spit. “The enjoyment from foraging starts with the adventure,” says Grdanovic, adding that showing chefs foods they’ve never seen before and learning how they end up preparing them is “the cherry on top for sure.” Holland is the climber while Grdanovic is the diving pro. “Between us there’s nothing we can’t do. I am always learning more about the different seaweeds that are edible.” Take the sea lettuce pictured, which the pair collected from Sydney’s northern beaches. These days, Holland is also foraging for the Noma Australia pop-up…

“It all started with my parents and grandparents, learning things from a young age, which then became an infatuation with our Australian produce,” says Sydney chef Elijah Holland of the beginnings of his food foraging obsession. “It gives you a different way of seeing food and the beauty of wild, untouched Mother Nature.” As one half of wild food gathering duo Natures Pick (with fellow chef Bojan Grdanovic), Holland is now working with the Noma team to forage ingredients for their just-opened Sydney pop-up restaurant. Diners might just spot these lemon aspen flowers on the menu. “It’s really phenomenal, giving you a taste of how amazing our country is. It’s now flowering and the beautiful, unique little flowers are just as incredible in flavour and taste as their fruit!,” Holland says of the blossoms. Through sharing his finds on Instagram, he hopes to spark more interest in wild edibles – “opening up their eyes to see what’s out there and not just at the supermarkets.”

Diego Bonetto is so bewitched by edible weeds that he runs workshops to help others with learning to find, prepare and eat them. Based in Sydney, the Italian-born foraging advocate started spotting plants here that he knew from back home when he moved to Australia 20 years ago. “I found the same species growing here, and after that just kept learning by reading books, familiarising myself with native species and asking endless questions to fellow plant nerds.” He’s also started a dedicated Instagram account to crowd-source information on wild foods and their whereabouts – followers can tag their own pics with #wildfoodmap to be featured on the @wildfoodmap account, and to get help with classifying and using their findings from others following that hashtag. “Instagram is an image-based tool, which is quite useful when trying to identify plants,” says Bonetto. “There is lots out there, so if you are looking for a quick visual fix, with a short caption, then Instagram is your tool.” Pictured here is dianella, a sweet, crunchy native berry with a nutty aftertaste that he found in inner Sydney.

Badju (bush potato), nawandak (file snake), an-djarruk (red bush apple). Ben Tyler’s Instagram feed offers a snapshot of these traditional Bininj foods – the local word for ‘Aboriginal’ in the north of Kakadu – showing followers not just what can be foraged there, but the traditional names and preparations of those foods, too. “Kakadu is Aboriginal land and the home of Bininj/Mungguy peoples, which I am connected to through my mother’s country/language group, Murumburr Umbukarla,” says Tyler. “My Bininj heritage is about continuing and sharing the practical and spiritual responsibility of looking after the wellbeing of our people and land.” From grinding green plums into a paste to cooking warradjan (pig-nosed turtle) in a ground oven lined with hot rocks, Tyler’s photos share how following the traditional way of collecting, preparing and cooking local foods connects him to his home – as he says, “a living cultural landscape.” The chance to tell this story through visuals is what brought him to Instagram. “I can share Bininj food stories, instantly, with a local-global audience to remind, inspire, and continue our Australian Indigenous food culture.”

Countless hours spent wandering in the bush, sand dunes and her hometown of Byron Bay naturally led Zana Wright to forage for edibles. “When I’m outside, I can’t help but have one eye out for native foods to snack on or to take home,” she says. “I have learned to read the landscape through the frame of what is edible and useful, instead of just as scenery. It’s been an amazing revelation for me to realise that the nature surrounding us is literally a buffet brimming with tasty and healthy edible surprises.” Sharing her finds on Instagram makes for good motivation to research the ingredients further and learn about their traditional Indigenous uses, while the pigface fruit (pictured above), pandanus, warrigal greens and sea purslane uncovered along the beach are served at native dinner events Wright hosts from time to time. “Bunya nut season is always exciting, as it only comes about every few years when the conditions are right,” she says of one of her favourite wild treats. “I’ve learned that it was a special time for Australian Indigenous people, who would travel in their thousands from far and wide to celebrate and feast on the sacred bunya nut.”