THE RESILIENT SEED: Samhain Seed Walk

Join facilitators Hannah Brazil and Olga Bloemen on a gentle seed walk around Portobello, to celebrate the recently established Seed Share at Portobello Library. We’ll tune our awareness to seeds and what we can learn from plants at this time of year, forage for seeds of wild plants that thrive in challenging places, and touch on how to identify, harvest, process and store their seeds.

The 31st of October is not only Halloween but also ‘Samhain’, the start of the new year in the old Celtic calendar. Samhain is right at the threshold between autumn abundance and the dormancy and decay of winter. Many of the plants around us have withered and are spreading their seed - so that new life can germinate during the dark winter months.

At the same time, the rhythms of the seasons are rattled profoundly by the climate crisis and habitat loss, and the plants and creatures around us are struggling to adapt. Both in cities and rural areas they (and we) are losing healthy ecosystems to thrive.

What can we learn from our wild plant community about resilience, remediation and repair? How can we help them adapt to rapid change? How can seeds help us connect to those who have come before and the futures still to flourish?

On this threshold between old and new, past and future, death and life, come join this exploratory ‘walkshop’, inspired by the ‘Work That Reconnects’. We’ll consider the specific ecologies of the area, and learn more about the importance of collecting, keeping and sharing seeds right where we live.

Both teenagers and adults are very welcome, whether you’re new to seed-keeping or not.

Please note the exact starting point for the walk will be confirmed shortly.

What to bring:

• A reusable cup if you can (to try some foraged teas)

• Dress for the Scottish weather

Accessibility:

We’ll walk at an easy pace, and for no more than a few miles, on wheelchair accessible paths.

There’ll be toilets available at the beginning and end of the walk.

Please contact the facilitators directly if you have any specific questions about the workshop or want to share particular access needs: olga.bloemen.facilitation @ gmail.com

About the facilitators:

Hannah Brazil is a community gardener, seed keeper and facilitator with a background in environmental anthropology. She runs multiple community gardens and nature-based projects in and around Edinburgh. Together with Olga and others she set up the Edinburgh Seed Network and looks after the Salisbury Centre Seed Library.

Hannah is passionate about tending to human-nature (dis)connection. Her work revolves around rekindling embodied relationships of care and regenerative cultural practices through community food growing and land stewardship, seed saving and exploring the stories we tell of who we are in relation to the ecosystems we share.

Olga Bloemen is a facilitator supporting community and activist groups, a poet and a gardener. She’s committed to building life-giving ecologies through challenge and change. She helped to set up the Edinburgh Seed Network together with Hannah and others. Until recently she was a fond resident of Portobello, but now she’s based just outside of Penicuik on a community-based rewilding project. She tends to agree with Mary Oliver: “There is only one question: How to love this world.”

Places are limited. Please book in advance.