Porty: the challenge, in pictures

Nature gone wild, wasps nests, dumped material.

Tree-mendous potential....

But where to begin?

WE NEED YOUR HELP!!!!!

Sunflowers - One month later...

It is one month since we planted Russian Giant seeds around Prestonpans. I'm pleased to report that the seeds are now flourishing seedlings.

We paid the Preston Road site a visit today and did battle with the weeds, got stung by nettles and extracted lots of crisp packets from the tree cages.

A woman walking her boxer dog remarked on their progress and some passengers on the X5 looked on encouragingly - children are a great decoy when guerrilla gardening!

On the way home we spotted an 'accidental sunflower' growing at the edge of the road. The householder gave us some funny looks when we stopped to take photographs of it!


p.s. Any Panners reading this - help watering and weeding Prestonpans sunflower sites would be most welcome!

Porty Town Hall Site - HELP!

As there are a couple of large trees in the centre of the garden we agreed that this part of the site should be kept grassed/planted with flowers as a social space, with growing plots either side.

We've decided to get cracking in terms of starting to clear the site. To that end we hope that as many volunteers as possible can make themselves free for a couple of hours over the next 2 weekends:

Sat 30th May, 2 - 4pm
Sun 31st May, 2 - 4pm

Sat 6th June, 2 - 4pm
Sun 7th June, 2 - 4pm

You will need gloves and please bring loppers/secateurs if you have them. Entrance to the site is via the Sir Harry Lauder memorial garden at Portobello Town Hall.

World Nakd Gardening Day

No, we are not making it up...there really is a 'World Naked Gardening Day'. However, Guerrilla Gardening is quite exciting (and chilly) enough without taking off layers of clothing so we decided to celebrated World Nakd Gardening Day/Week/Month, with the help of our friends at Natural Balance Foods.



While we were mixing clay, wildflower seeds, sunflowers and compost to make seedbombs, little gnomes were working through the night smooshing raw fruit, nuts and oats into these uber-healthy yum-bombs.


They were very well received by the troops, junior guerrillas and members of the public alike with cries of "Ooh, give me more, More, MORE" and "Das war köstlich!" and "How often do you guys meet? I'd really like to join you".





The Trek Bars were large enough for two hungry guerrillas to share (a perfect breakfast for early morning starts), while the Banana Bread was a handy size to shove in back pockets as a quick snack on the run.

The raisins were a huge hit with the young gardeners with the cherry infused variety being the most popular.

And, the entire Nakd range is suitable for vegans.

The Nakd bars were all branded with a little bee which was quite appropriate as we were meeting to put together packets of 'Burning Bee' - our bee attracting seed mix.


Those of us on seed packet duty discovered that the Wildly Different bars went great with a glass of wine (those of us on digging duty discovered that if you have a glass of wine you have trouble balancing on your fork).




















Thank you Nakd for the best fun a gardener can have with their clothes on! To get hold of your own Prezzie box, packed full of things that make you say 'Yum!', visit the Nakd shop.

International Guerrilla Sunflower Day - Prestonpans Posse

As all good guerrillas know, May 1st is International Guerrilla Sunflower Day. You can read about other people's activities on this Guerrilla Gardening forum thread. We couldn't join the rest of the troop in Edinburgh so carried out a series of missions in our home town of Prestonpans.
This morning, I took my two youngest children to a tiny patch of land off Wilson Avenue to plant sunflower seeds. It is my favourite type of guerrilla gardening site - lots of pedestrian traffic, largely unnoticed... and with the potential to be stunning. Ironically, it backs on to the formal and very well maintained Tower Gardens, notable for its beautiful laburnham archway.
We removed some weeds and broken glass then planted gladioli and the front and sunflower seeds all along the back wall. For a bit of instant colour we transplanted some grape hyacinth taken from our back garden.

After a good water (we took a milk bottle and take an extra, punctured lid to act as sprinkler) we paid a visit to our second site in the Conservation Village - the 'Caged Sunflowers' on Preston Road, (they were planted in a tree cage). We removed some of the choking weeds and were pleased to see the seedlings are coming on fine. A police patrol car gave no more than a passing glance at our 'Little Princess' and 'Barbie' gardening trugs.
Back home we grabbed the seedbombs we had made a couple of days ago (wildflower seeds, sunflower seeds, compost and fuller's earth) and flung them over the parking lot in Preston Court.

You can see all the Prestonpans sunflower sites plotted on this map (switch to 'Bird's Eye View' for a glimpse of the beautiful gardens).

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!