Food for Thought: Fri 24/04/09 19:00hrs

Start Time:	Friday, April 24, 2009 at 7:00pm
End Time:	Saturday, April 25, 2009 at 1:00am
Location:	The Meadow Bar
Street:	42-44 Buccleuch St

The Transition Edinburgh South's Food, Gardening and Tree group are proud to present a night of food, film and fine music.

For your gastric happiness there will be a buffet provided by all the wonderful members of the FGT group.

And......for your entertainment there will be live music performed by local artists, food related film shorts discussing the future of food and the Guerrilla gardening movement, poetry recitals with distinctly fruity themes and a raffle with lots of food and gardening related prizes on offer.

So if you like all things foody, enjoy good music, are interested in the transition movement and the future of food in this growing peak oil crisis, or just want to have a good night.......please come along and join us, chat with us listen to music and eat good food.

£3 entry (All proceeds will go to TES Community Gardening inititatives, primarily to provide tools and seeds for various Guerrilla Gardening projects and aid in building a raised bed garden and plastic bottle green house for a local primary school)

Book launch by AK Press for Nowtopia by Chris Carlsson

Hello everyone!

Alexis from AK Press had contacted Edinburgh Guerrilla Gardeners to see if we would like to participate in this book launch, held yesterday (Wed 15th April) at WordPower books, West Nicolson Street and also at an event to be held later on the same evening at Forest Cafe. Nowtopia by Chris Carlsson, an American activist of many years standing, brings together a number of topics where people are beginning to challenge how they live and redefining modern life. It includes a section on guerrilla gardening. Andrea and I attended the book launch at WordPower and took flyers and seed packets to give to everyone there. Chris showed a number of quite inspiring images of community gardens from America and other parts of the globe - gardens which have become not just places to grow food and flowers: but also meeting/social spaces which have helped bring the local community together. Andrea, Tom, Beinta and I then all attended the book launch at Forest Cafe. The Bike Station as well as Edinburgh GG had been invited to this to give a talk on things happening locally. Beinta had prepared a lovely wee talk to let folk know what guerrilla gardening was all about and I gave a bit of spiel on some of the activities we are doing or have in the pipeline. The event was well attended and we had some interesting chats with folk afterwards including a guy who already has established his own permaculture garden and a guerrilla gardener from Glasgow who has now moved back to Edinburgh. We are hopeful that we will have some more volunteers soon! The seed packets and flyers went down extremely well so 3 cheers to everyone for all the work put in to getting these done! Sorry there are no photos but the couple taken were a bit distorted so had to discard them!

Portobello Town Hall garden space, EH15

Hello everyone!

Andrea and I today met with Scott Thomson who is a local (East Edinburgh) Parks Manager with Edinburgh Council to discuss possible gardening projects we could get involved with. One area suggested is the very neglected and overgrown garden space at the back of Portobello town hall. Porty town hall is much beloved by the local community who raised money for the Sir Harry Lauder memorial garden which is on the town hall site and one of the projects we are going to help with. However the back area requires a lot of work but Scott would be happy for us to take this on as a project to turn into a community growing space: food and flowers!! There is a lot of potential here and it would be great to get the local community involved as much as possible. Scott will contact the appropriate person within the council to get the go ahead and can help out in terms of rubbish removal once clearing starts. I think this is all very exciting!! Needs more thought on just what we'd like to do with this site. Perhaps we could do a site visit on May 1st before making seedbombs? Would be great to get cracking with this site asap! It is also possible that Porty Community Council may be able to give us a small grant, say £200 towards stuff such as compost bins, seeds etc.

West Richmond Street site, EH8

Hello everyone!

This is the site at West Richmond Street that my work colleagues and I have started working on just recently. Our office is just across the road from this site. This particular garden and public path has been neglected and overlooked for a long time! Usually it gets left until the weeds are 3 ft high and then it gets completely butchered and then ignored until the weeds grow back again!! It was once a rather pretty rose garden but neglect had turned it into rather a sad and sorry looking site. So far we have dug over and weeded a couple of sections but there is still a lot to be done. We've planted a variety of bulbs for some summer colour. We've also seeded all the areas we've done so far and planted sunflowers along the wall. Whilst we think the local pigeons did have a bit of an all-you-can-eat buffet after we'd finished, things are starting to sprout up!! We've done a couple of sessions so far but looking to do a few hours one weekend soon - will post on blog site once a date/time has been set. The ground is quite compacted so digging will be required! Everything we've sown is all very bee-friendly and we are hopeful that by the summer there will be a beautiful little oasis in West Richmond Street! Local residents have been extremely supportive and appreciative of our efforts.

Know of a neglected site? Tell us and win seeds!

You know how it is, you are walking along a street, minding your own business, when you spot it...a potential guerrilla gardening project.

You start picturing carrots and courgettes where there are currently cans and carrier bags, pansies and pots instead of pizza packaging, nesting boxes instead of nettles... (you get the picture).

If there is just such an area that you know about in the Lothians/EH postcode area, please tell us about it by leaving a comment.

We can't guarantee we will take it on but we would love to hear from you.

At midnight on Wednesday 22nd April (Earth Day), four names will be drawn at random from all comments published. We will then get in touch with the winners to send a packet of our very own Burning Bee mix.

Seedier Side of Life

Four of our troop met up in Prestonpans to make up packets of 'Burning Bee' see mix.

The seed packets, which were designed by Lucy-Ann, contained a bee-attracting mix of Yarrow, Corn Cockle, Bishop's Weed, Snapdragon, Granny's Bonnet, Pot Marigold, Safflower, Cornflower, Siberian Wallflower, Painted Daisy, Chicory, Clarkia, Chinese Houses, Tick Seed, Cosmos, Hound's Tongue, Wild Carrot, Larkspur, Sweet William, African Daisy, Coneflower, California Poppy, Indian Blanket, Bird's Eye, Summer Azalea, Gypsophila, Sweet Rocket, Candytuft, Flax, Germany Catchfly, Mallow, Alpine Forget-Me-Not, Five Spot, Love-In-A-Mist, Evening Primrose, Flanders Poppy, Californian Bluebell, Scorpian Weed, Blackeyed Susan, Sage, Soapwort, Campion, Sweet Alyssum, Prince's Feather, Love-Lies-Bleeding, Golden Marguerite, China Aster, Knapweed, Painted Daisy, Chrysanthemum, Ox-eye Daisy, Corn Marigold, Viper's Bugloss, Summer Azalea, Sunflower, Morning Glory, Marvel of Peru, Pincushion Flower, Campion, Honesty and Zinnia.

Beinta, Carrots, Jan and Thea, assisted by junior Guerrillas, made up over 60 packets which will be given out at forthcoming guerrilla gardening events (including the launch of Nowtopia at The Forest Cafe, 3 Bristo Place, Edinburgh, EH1 on Wednesday 15th April - details to follow).

The reverse of each packet gives instructions on making seed bombs - great for lobbing into inaccessible areas.

We will be making seed bombs on Friday 1st May. It will be messy...it will be fun. It will be so much better if you could join us....