Alison Gardner

Alison Gardner was born in Santa Barbara, California, and moved north to the Mendocino coast with her family in 1969, at the age of 10. She learned her first mushrooms the next fall, from an "old-timer", and has been an avid mushroom hunter and eater ever since. She has attended and teacher-aided for the local Community College mushroom classes, as well as leading private mushroom tours. She started cooking meals regularly for the family at age 13, learning from her mother, a cousin and a neighbor. She took a commercial cooking class in high school, and worked in two restaurants in her teens and early twenties. She has done some catering for weddings. She is also a botanist and potter, the chief tea packer for the Mendocino Tea Company, and still resides on the Mendocino coast.