Wild Garlic Season: How to Find Wild Garlic (And What to Do With It)

A passionate chef's aim is to use ingredients sourced as locally as possible. Local ingredients help create a flavoursome dish, giving it a depth and richness that's hard to replicate. Imagine dining on the Valencian coast, savouring the moment with a seafood paella inspired by the shoreline — mussels and shrimp caught just offshore, tomatoes, green beans and herbs sourced from nearby farms — all while watching the sun set over the horizon. It's a moment you simply won't forget.

Ingredients matter, right down to the herbs and spices you use. Garlic is arguably one of the most used ingredients in the world, transcending Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Indian, Asian and American cuisine. As the backbone of so many dishes, high-quality wild garlic can be instrumental in elevating the base of a recipe, and in honour of wild garlic season – this post is dedicated to helping you successfully forage garlic in the UK.

"The first shoots of wild garlic in the UK emerge from the wetter areas of the woodland floor in the early spring sunshine, before the trees above have had a chance to shade out everything that grows beneath. By May, the shaded woodland floor is a shifting patchwork quilt of white garlic flowers and bluebells. The delicate newer leaves are the ones to pick — carefully, so as not to dislodge the whole plant from its place." — Lucy Carr-Ellison and Jemima Jones, Wild by Tart

When does wild garlic season start in the UK?

You'll start to see the first shoots of wild garlic appear in the wetter areas of woodland in the early spring sunshine, around late February. They come out before the trees get their leaves back, when the canopy would otherwise shade out everything growing beneath. March and April are the best times to pick wild garlic in the UK, as this is when the leaves are at their most tender and flavourful.

How can you identify wild garlic in the woodlands?

The key to identifying wild garlic is simply in the way it smells — drive past a woodland filled with the stuff and you'll catch a hint of garlic in the air. Visually, this bulbous perennial plant has sharp, spear-shaped leaves with pointed tips that grow from the base. The leaves range between 5–15cm in length and 3–6cm in width, each with a single prominent rib running down the middle.

The plant is topped with a single white flower head made up of small, delicate flowers with six pointed petals. These flowers eventually turn into green, bead-like seeds that form in clusters of three. And if you pull a plant from the ground, you'll notice the root has a pale yellow colour — just like a clove of garlic you'd find in your kitchen.

Are there any poisonous plants that look like wild garlic?

Lily of the Valley is one plant that's often confused with wild garlic — it has similar pointed leaves and small white flowers, and it can be especially easy to mix up before either plant flowers. Worth knowing: Lily of the Valley is poisonous and can affect the heart if ingested. If it is flowering, you'll notice the flowers are bell-shaped, whereas wild garlic flowers have pointed petals that splay outwards. The leaves of Lily of the Valley also grow in pairs and wrap delicately around the base, while wild garlic leaves grow independently from the base, splaying outward just like their flowers.

The Autumn Crocus is another plant that looks dangerously similar to wild garlic. It contains a chemical called colchicine which, if ingested, can cause early symptoms including nausea, abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhoea. The key distinction here is that wild garlic has a single thick stem running through the middle of each leaf, while the Autumn Crocus has no stems at all.

When in doubt, remember this: crushed wild garlic will always smell like garlic. That's your best test.

How can you use wild garlic in recipes?

Wild garlic can be used both raw and cooked, and it's wonderfully versatile. One of my favourite quick and easy recipes is a classic wild garlic pesto pasta. Simply combine 100g of wild garlic with basil, parmesan, pine nuts, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper in a pestle and mortar, or blitz it all together, to create your pesto — then toss it through your pasta of choice. Make a bigger batch and store the rest in a jar in the fridge; it keeps beautifully.

You can also dry out the wild garlic leaves and grind them into a powder, which you can stir into mayonnaise to make a wild garlic aioli. Trust me, it's the perfect dip for a pizza crust.