From the meadow straight to the plateAstrid Saubert

"That's ground ivy, by the way." Astrid Saubert bends down, picks a small, inconspicuous plant and rubs it between her fingers. "It tastes good in chocolate cake or in herbal lemonade. But you can also flavour carrot vegetables with ground ivy." The herb teacher is in her element. It won't be the only time that the 56-year-old stops along the way to pick something from the ground. Sometimes it's compass lily, sometimes meadow hogweed. There's also St John's wort and St John's wort growing somewhere along the roadside. Valerian. Bedstraw. And garlic rocket. "Have a smell." Indeed. Astrid Saubert not only knows around 160 herbs by name. She also knows what they are good for, what healing properties they have and how to prepare them in the kitchen. Today on the menu of her small herb café in Geilenkausen: spruce tip pesto, colourful meadow salad "Mäh und Muh" and nettle fever, homemade nettle gnocchi in a spicy tomato sauce with wild herbs and flowers. Bon appétit.

The counter is still in its original state. Wood panelling, brutal oak. Just like it used to be in old village pubs. In contrast, the lime green painted walls are adorned with delicate ferns, grasses and butterflies. It is cosy. Plates and cups are colourful. There is a wide selection of herbal teas as well as homemade chutneys, fruit spreads and wild herb mustard. "I'm not quite finished with the furnishings yet," says Astrid Saubert, almost as if she's apologising. "Beautiful curtains are still missing." And the woman with a special knack for all things green and flowering still has plenty of other ideas for her herb café right on the Bergischer Panoramasteig. But one thing at a time. After all, the whole thing wasn't planned to begin with. Astrid Saubert only wanted to rent a small room to offer herbal seminars. And suddenly she had leased the entire village pub ...

A lot has changed in the 56-year-old's life since she first thought about "doing something else" ten years ago. She no longer wanted to spend nine hours a day standing in a flower shop, carrying heavy vases and pots and being exposed to pesticides and herbicides. That was the first step. However, it took another two years to get there. It was during this time that the trained florist first came across the word herb pedagogue. "Until then, I didn't even know that there was such a thing," admits Astrid Saubert and recounts with some disbelief how she suddenly heard the word in prayer. So the decision was made. This was followed by two years of training at the Gundermann Academy in Münstereifel, guided herb walks through the forests and flowering meadows in her adopted home of Waldbröl and seminars in her own living room. However, this soon became too small.

However, when Astrid Saubert was forced to close her herb café for months last autumn,

"the only thing I could do was cook and bake".

So she invented the picnic rucksack, filled with herbal lemonade, starter, main course and dessert. A huge success. "People have celebrated birthdays in the meadows with the rucksacks," says the herb educator, who goes to the herb meadows every morning to collect herbs and regularly takes children on tours through the blossoming nature near Waldbröl. "Children aren't scared at all," says the mum of two grown-up sons. On the contrary. Unlike many adults, they have no fear of contact at all. And if they do get bored, Astrid Saubert always has a jar of shaking butter with her. "My joker," she says, smiling and picking something from the meadow. It could be compass lily. Or perhaps meadow hogweed?