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!