A series of events are planned in the autumn and spring providing hands-on knowledge sharing sessions led by different ecologists, scientists and community gardeners.

Sat 24.10.26, 10.30am-12.15pm
Soil Health + Microscopy Workshop with Life to Lab
@Portobello Library

What does healthy soil look like? Join Life to Lab (Mary Silk and Jamie Sommerville) for an interactive session on soil health and the living world beneath our feet. Together we’ll explore some of the organisms that go to make up healthy soil, including fungi, protozoa and nematodes, and discuss what their presence or absence can tell us. Participants are invited to bring along samples of their own soil for analysing. We’ll also discuss practical ways to support and improve soil health, that help to build more resilient, productive and ecologically friendly growing systems.

Mary Silk and Jamie Sommerville bring together backgrounds in soil science, ecology, farming and food growing to share knowledge, inspire curiosity and translate current science into practical land management. They are interested in how they can support the restoration of healthy, productive soils and the habitats they sustain, creating benefits that extend throughout the food system and ultimately to human health.

Places are limited. Please book in advance.

Sat 31.10.26, 10.30am-1pm
Samhain Seed Walk with Hannah Brazil and Olga Bloemen
Meeting point: Art Walk Project Space (Old Police Station) 118 Portobello High St

Join facilitators Hannah Brazil and Olga Bloemen on a gentle seed walk around Rosefield Park, 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 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 the abundance of autumn and the dormancy and decay of winter. 

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. 

This exploratory walkshop will consider what we can learn from our wild plant community about resilience, remediation and repair. How can we help them adapt to rapid change? We’ll consider the specific ecologies of the area, and learn more about the importance of collecting, keeping and sharing seeds right by where we live.

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.”

THE RESILIENT SEED is funded by ECCAN (Edinburgh Communities Climate Action Network), with additional support from Porty Community Energy and Edinburgh’s Thriving Greenspaces.

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We invite you to visit Portobello Library to browse, borrow or add your homegrown seed to the collection box. When borrowing seed please list in the log book the seeds you are taking, using the seed packets to store the seeds. We encourage you to then return seed once the plants have matured.

Although the Seed Share is primarily about storing and distributing open-pollinated seed, we welcome too shop bought seed. Rather than logging these into our logbook we ask you just to add them to the collection box keeping them in their shop bought packets.

This seed project has been developed out of our recent community project Remedy, a coastal medicinal plant photo-arts project working with participants from Access to Industry, led by artist Zoe Hamill and Herbal Scotland exploring scrubland areas at Seafield.

Launch Events:

April 2026:
Childrens’ drop-in at Portobello Library, creating cyanotypes from locally collected plants (led by artist Zoe Hamill).

Portobello Seed Swap at Portobello Library with Herbal Scotland. A chance to exchange seeds and learn about ways of working with seeds in herbal medicine.

We plan to programme a series of seed swaps, talks, walks and workshops involving a number of artists, ecologists and growers as the project evolves and more seed is collected. Please email us if you have suggestions for future events or would like to get more involved.

Created in partnership with Portobello Library and funded by Creative Scotland and Awards for All.

Image: Thanks to Hussein (Access to Industry participant)

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Portobello Seed Share supports sustainable growing developing a seed bank of local resilient seed to be saved and shared.

We invite you to browse, borrow or add open pollinated seed to the new Seed Share located in Portobello Library.

This seed project comes through Remedy, a coastal medicinal plant photo-arts project working with Access to Industry, artist Zoe Hamill and Herbal Scotland led by Art Walk Projects in 2026.

Upcoming Events;

Tues 14 April, 2pm-3pm: Childrens’ drop-in (ages 6-10 years): Join us in making cyanotypes from locally collected plants with artist Zoe Hamill.

Weds 22 April, 6.30pm-7.45pm: Portobello Seed Swap at Portobello Library. Join us to to launch the new Portobello Seed Share project, exchange seeds, and hear from Herbal Scotland about medicinal plants. Tickets available from Portobello Library.

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Working across areas of experimental photo-arts, coastal ecology and medicinal health, Remedy is an exploratory based community project working with a number of participants from Access to Industry.

Led by photographer Zoe Hamill, and working in collaboration with herbalists from Herbal Scotland, a series of eight workshops have recently being held in Portobello.

Top image (Colin) – processed using plants collected from local Portobello sites.

The workshops involved learning about analogue as well as camera-less photography, along with expert knowledge of medicinal plant ecology and remedy-making, to include photo-walks, plant-based film processing, plant identification and seed collection.

The project culminated in a public event held in March 2026 to view some of the photographs created through the project as well as to launch the new Portobello Seed Share and a small printed publication illustrating the various images produced (available to view – clicking image below).

The Portobello Seed Share is now available at Portobello Library for visitors to browse, borrow or add seed to. The seed share supports sustainable growing with the aim of developing a seed bank of locally resilient seed to be saved and shared.

Zoe is a photographer from Co. Antrim, now living in Edinburgh. She is interested in the relationship between humans and the environment, as well as the systems of classification that we use to make sense of the world around us. She was recently a commissioned artist for Connecting Threads Watery Commons programme, and is currently carrying out a Darkroom Garden residency at CraigmillarNow.

Supported by funding from City of Edinburgh Council Event Fund.

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Felicity Bristow and Susie Wilson first began their residency in 2019 working the land from their garden shed at Plot 55b at Craigentinny Telferton Allotments. However due to the lockdown in March 2020 the artists continued to work together, though apart, developing a growing project sending seed to each other and other participants to grow, later harvest, and collect seed from. Out of this their ‘Growing in Isolation’ project developed in 2020 involving a postal exchange. Touching the earth, planting the seeds and tending the growing plants was something positive and hopeful for many people in the growing community, in such an uncertain and anxious time. The seeds became the focus to their work and made them realise the importance of ‘the seed’ to this commission with them in 2019 establishing ‘The Seed Library’.

The delight and quiet of spending time growing something and protecting it as it matures was felt to be very rewarding by many people growing in isolation. The Seed Library received generous donations of seeds from plot holders at C&T allotments, as well as from UK-wide network of other growers which they have continued to share throughout their project.

The Plot55b residency project culminated in 2021 with the publishing of an artist bookwork bringing together the various elements the artists had encountered and experienced through the period of working engaging with the allotments. It is record of a very fragile time globally whilst focussing on the detail of the growing of a seed, and what that process brought to so many as this uncertain and difficult time.

PRESS

ARTIST INTERVIEW with ART NORTH ‘Art & Food’ special issue read here
ARTIST INTERIVEW with freelance writer & reviewer, Genevieve Fay read here

LIST OF WORKS & EVENTS

2020
‘Wassailing’ at Plot 55b, Craigentinny Telferton Allotments
8 March 2020 – A celebration of planting two new apple trees on Plot 55b. With apple themed verse, song and toast to the new trees followed by a walk to wake the trees at Craigentinny & Telferton Allotments for a bountiful growing season in 2020.

2021
Planted exhibition Art Walk Porty Hub – September 2020
Alongside Seed Walk, Meadows Yard Nature Reserve
& Book Launch Plot 55B Art Walk Porty Hub
Growing in Isolation window installation Portobello Library – August 2020

2022
Seed Walks, Musselburgh Lagoons – October 2022

Felicity Bristow
Felicity’s site-specific work is an exploration of line, narrative, material and the pervading spirit of place or ‘genius loci’. Felicity is fascinated with words, with making, researching and exploring the physical structure of books and buildings site specifically.

Felicity studied architecture at Edinburgh College of Art (1993 – 99) and qualified as an architect, practising in Edinburgh until 2008 while also teaching part time at ECA (2003 – 07). In Summer 2016 she completed a MA in Contemporary Art Practice, with Merit. She now lives and works as an artist in the Scottish Borders developing her own research-based practice in her WASP’s studio (Selkirk) and works part time for the Creative Arts Business Network (CABN) in Selkirk and North Light Arts in Dunbar.

felicitybristow.com

Susie Wilson
Susie’s work examines the relationship between the hidden and the seen both metaphorically and physically. Exploring the book form enables her to combine print, paint and collage in a more sculptural way. The intimacy of holding the book, each page hiding then revealing the next, creates an atmosphere that is deeply personal. She is interested in this sense of revelation. Layers of translucent paper, stitched and cut into, obscure the forms and images creating a tension between the various areas reflecting the delicacy, fragility and subtlety of the subject.

Susie Wilson graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 1992 with a BA (Hons) Degree and PostGrad. in Drawing and Printmaking. She won two scholarships to Athens School of Fine Art (1990) and to Seville School of Fine Art (1992) to study printmaking. In 2001 she gained a place on the CATS course (Creative and Technical Skills Programme) run by the Print Studio at Dundee Contemporary Arts. Her work has been shown in many group exhibitions in Scotland, most recently at WASPS, Patriothall, Edinburgh (2012), MacNaughtans Bookshop, Edinburgh (2011), Society of Scottish Artists (2012),Visual Arts Scotland (2012), Andrew Grant Gallery (Edinburgh College of Art, 2011), Dundee Contemporary Arts (2002) and Meffan Gallery (2002). Her books and prints have also been exhibited abroad in India (2010) and the USA (2011). Her work is in the collection of the City Art Centre, Edinburgh Fine Art Library and Edinburgh College of Art. She has taught Printmaking and Artist Books at Edinburgh College of Art for ten years and also teaches in adult education and schools in and around Edinburgh. Recently awarded Sally Schofield Memorial Prize, (Visual Arts Scotland, 2015) and Nancy Graham Memorial Book Prize (VAS, 2014)

susiewilson.org

Images by: Elle McMaster

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