Seed and Tree Festival

Share the seeds and sing to the trees

Celebrating food for the common good.

Common Good Food and Helping Britain Blossom bring you this unique day of celebration, practical workshops and planning for national political action.

In dark times the best thing to do is have a party, and winter can be long and difficult. So please join us on the 6th February to celebrate the lengthening days and make radical plans for the 2016 growing season.

Scotland has a growing local food movement, the Scottish government has stated that Scotland should be a good food nation, and the earth under our feet has a lot of potential to feed us – if only we can find the right plants to grow there. Variety is the spice of life, yet how many varieties of Scottish grown fruit and veg can you readily find? Right now we rely heavily on imported food, and two things that are very scarce, yet which could be abundant, are locally grown vegetable seeds and orchard fruits.

“How do we safeguard the genetic and cultural resilience of Scotland’s home-grown food, starting with seeds and orchards?”

This is the serious question we will be asking, along with a good measure of fun: music, stories, firelight, curry and ceilidh.

Event Programme

9.45- 10.15 Registration

MORNING SESSION: SEEDS

10.15am Opening Plenary

• Food for the common good starts with seeds- Fergus Walker of Common Good Food
• Keeping our shared seed heritage alive - Neil Munro from the Heritage Seed Library

11 - 11.20am Break

11.20 - 1pm Workshops / Discussions (2 sessions)

• Practical workshop on seed saving
• Community seed banks in USA and Canada - Charlotte Dove, London Freedom Seed Bank
• Hebridean Bere and other heritage seeds of Scotland - Maria Scholten, Scottish Crofting Federation
• Seeds of Sovereignty: Seed saving work of the Gaia Foundation
• Open discussion: Visioning meeting for Orchard Collective Scotland

Plus children's activities and more to be confirmed. Would you like to run a seed-related session? Please get in touch with the organisers if you have something exciting, interesting or inspirational to contribute!

1 - 2pm Lunch – Stalls and seed swap featuring the Common Good Food Seed Kist – a mixture of Scotland-specific seeds free for you to take away. Please bring any seeds of your own to swap or add to the growing collection.

AFTERNOON: ORCHARDS

2-2.30pm Orchard Collective Update. A report back on key orchard happenings over the last year from the Orchard Collective Scotland.

2.30 - 3.30pm Workshops/discussions

• Tree grafting demonstration with Andrew Lear, Appletreeman
• How run your own Wassailing celebration with Catherine Lloyd
• Wassailing singing workshop with Jane Lewis
• Lantern-making, bird feeder making and other family activities.
• Orchard Stories with Marie Louise Cochrane AKA Mrs Mash the Storytelling Cook
• Open discussion: Can we set up a Scottish Seed Library?

4 - 6pm Wassail - Torchlit procession to nearby Rose Garden Orchard, with lanterns, music, song and mulled apple juice. Wassailing is an age-old custom to ensure a good crop of fruit in the coming year.

EVENING: PARTY!

6-10pm Curry and Ceilidh

Join us for a merry end to an action-packed day. Curry prepared by Babu Bombay Street Kitchen using seasonal local veg will be served at 6pm, followed by a rousing ceilidh withAnnasach. There will be a bar serving local wines, cider, craft ales and soft drinks. Children are welcome to the ceilidh.

For further information before booking tickets, contact us on [email protected].Please do get in touch if you are part of a community group or organisation that would like to have a stall or participate in the seed swap.