A great edible garden

In Andrães, on the doorstep of Vila Real, there is a huge garden of biodiversity. The idea was dreamt up by Graça Soares, who is passionate for the riches of the wild, which from an early age she learned to recognise and value.

The company Ervas Finas was thus born in the countryside, and is devoted to education on the consumption of vegetables, herbs and edible flowers, fostering a balance between art, the countryside and cuisine.

An early contact with Nature

Born in Peso da Régua, the businesswoman Graça Soares had from an early age a close contact with everything connected with rural life. “I always split my holidays between the villages of my grandmothers, and it was always a wonderful time. I’ve always loved the countryside and everything you can do in it, from gastronomy to culture.” 

Graça trained in zootechnics, specializing in the food industry, and “because she loves art and Nature”, she also took a degree in Landscape Architecture. It was then that she started to conceive what would be “the project of a lifetime”. 

Ervas Finas produces a very wide diversity of foods. Some 250 species, from herbs to flowers, are made available every day. “We have an experimental kitchen where we create and develop recipes in order to propose new usages. Some are better known, others less so, because they’re more exotic, and there’s also the ones native to our flora with which we love to work,” she explains.

In this vast garden of unconventional flavours, the focus is on the “rediscovery of the edible potential of wild plants that has been so undervalued until now.” 

A distinctive cuisine

These products are most sought after by restaurants geared to the “more elaborate signature gourmet concept”. Besides these channels, private individuals are also interested, and this was in fact how they started in business, delivering hampers to their homes. Although the latter have shown a great acceptance, it was with hotels that their orders grew, under a “business-to-business” model.

The way in which Graça brings dynamics to her productions is by promoting organised group activities. “It may be visits to the countryside with demonstrations or a day spent wth us. We teach how to prepare the menu, which may be thematic or not, according to the season. We also welcome and teach anyone who simply wants to learn how to cook with herbs and flowers. The upside of these demonstrations is that we get to taste everything in the end,” she points out with a smile.

The garden covers 1.5 hectares, with two thousand square metres of greenhouses and the rest being open land. The most sensitive crops, such as “little salad leaves and some flowers”, are protected from adverse weather.

Multiple destinations

Despite the difficulties inherent in creating and maintaining a company of this nature, “you just can’t sit back” and the business is already planned with an eye on exports. “The targets will be Northern Europe, Macao and possibly Angola. We have the ambition of exporting processed products, including processed herbs and flowers in jellies, jams and dehydrated petals.”

Ervas Finas is proud of its work, notably its consumption educational activities for young people. Graça even reveals that this is “part of the secret of the project.”

Another aspect is that we also counter expose the popular myth that children don’t like vegetables. “Parents believe that they dislike vegetables and don’t like to try new things, but I see exactly the opposite here. They want to try everything, even if at first it doesn’t taste good. I think that a focus on these visits for interpreting Nature and showing the little ones from where things come is the right way,” she concludes.

 

 

Text: Patricia Posse | Daniel Faiões