Edinburgh Seed Network is a new project set up by a small volunteer collective to facilitate the sharing and celebration of seed among home and community growers in Edinburgh. We want everyone to have free access to growing food that’s good for the environment and good for us.
We want to:
Grow community, skills and local seed stock through…
- Supporting the creation and promotion of community seed libraries at community gardens and hubs across the city
- Supporting home growers to set up peer-led seed circles
- Organising and promote seasonal events and educational workshops to share knowledge and skills, learn how to save seeds, swap seeds and build community seed libraries, learn to grow local food, flowers and medicinal plants
- Celebrating seed and growing through interwoven art, music and stories that bring people together
Our website is currently in development but we’re aiming for it to be a one stop shop for anyone who’s interested in learning about and getting involved in saving and sharing seed for growing food in Edinburgh.
We are…
Caro Overy is a musician, songwriter and sustainability professional. Living in Edinburgh since 2009, she leads community choirs and works with Creative Carbon Scotland to support organisations and artists with carbon management. She also writes and performs music with Caro Bridges & The River and The Enharmonic Collective, and grows food small scale in her top floor flat.
Hannah Brazil is the seed librarian at the Salisbury Centre Seed Library – our first community seed library project in Edinburgh. She is a passionate seed keeper, facilitator and environmental anthropologist. Her research and work revolve around human-nature (dis)connection and planetary health, focussing on regenerative culture, seed saving and the stories we tell of who we are in relation to nature. She’s been involved in sustainable community food growing, permaculture and collaborative education for social change projects around the world and volunteers in the Salisbury Centre food growing garden. She loves wild swimming and rarely misses the chance to see a sunset.
Olga Bloemen is a facilitator, community development worker and budding storyteller. She’s currently working for both Tripod: Training for Creative Social Action and the Salisbury Centre in Edinburgh. Previously she worked for Nourish Scotland, an organisation campaigning for food justice, where she explored food and popular education as vehicles for social change, and sat on the board of Common Good Food. She never makes the same bowl of porridge twice, and would like to care for an apple orchard one day. She tends to agree with Mary Oliver: “There is only one question: How to love this world.”
Sarah Irvine is a musician and a primary school teacher. Born and raised in the tropics of Queensland, Australia, she has a keen interest in the connection we have to landscape and to home. Sarah has been studying horticulture with the University of Tasmania and the Royal Edinburgh Botanical Gardens. She currently has a small shared garden where she experiments with growing vegetables and flowers and with saving seeds. She is passionate about making raspberry jam and this year hopes to grow enough aubergines for a really delicious moussaka.
Mika Moriyama is currently working at the Salisbury Centre doing volunteer coordination and outreach for their climate challenge project. With a background in ecology, behaviour-change conservation campaigns, and grassroots climate action, she loves initiatives that are good for people and planet. Completely new to growing and seed saving, she is passionate about making sustainable, just, and regenerative solutions accessible to more people. She thinks food is an amazing way to connect to culture, to people, and to land.
edinburghseednetwork.org 