The Neighbouring Orchard

We're so pleased to be welcoming Annie Lord to the bookshop on Thursday 1st September to celebrate the launch of her new book, The Neighbouring Orchard. Written and illustrated by Annie herself, the book tells the story of her major artwork, creating a community of 160 apple trees across Edinburgh’s coastal suburbs featuring original illustrations, photography and interviews with the growers. Annie will be in conversation with artist and writer Christina Riley.

We are planning for this event to take place in the bookshop with an in-person audience.

About The Neighbouring Orchard project:

Created by Annie Lord as a commission from Art Walk Projects in 2020, The Neighbouring Orchard is a network of 160 trees planted out across the South East of Edinburgh and East Lothian. It spans several neighbourhoods including the coastal suburbs of Portobello and Musselburgh and, further inland, Craigmillar. Each tree is planted in a visible location and the apple varieties grown - including East Lothian Pippin, Catshead and Tower of Glamis- all have direct links to the local area, either grown there by previous generations of gardeners or originating from the local area.

As planning for the artwork began in February 2020, the original idea was to have a new community orchard planted on a single site that could be planted and tended by locals. But by March, the arrival of COVID-19 meant that the project would have to take a different form. If community gatherings were prohibited, how could a network of gardeners be created?

The original concept – one orchard in one place – was no longer viable. Instead, the Neighbouring Orchard would span 6 miles of suburban Edinburgh from east to west. Individual growers came forward after a public appeal, willing to plant and nurture a tree in a public facing place: gardens visible from the street, patches of wasteland reclaimed by the community, shared tenement greens, play parks, doctors’ surgeries, care homes and more, all close enough together to be linked by pollinators. The first 110 trees were planted in winter 2020/21. They arrived as bare root trees – leafless and dormant. A network of growers was formed, and 50 more trees were added to the orchard in March 2022 – the web of apple trees becoming denser. The Neighbouring Orchard is tended by individuals but is rooted in community. The new book is the story of the creation of the Neighbouring Orchard, and of the growers who take care of it.

Annie Lord is a performer and visual artist based in Edinburgh. She trained in sculpture at The Slade School of Fine Art (London) before developing her work to encompass storytelling and live performance. Annie's work explores geographic and cultural histories and the ways in which they shape the present. Her performances draw on local history as well as having a fascination with material processes.

Christina Riley is an artist and writer based on the Ayrshire coast. Her essays have recently been published in The Clearing, Caught by the River, Elsewhere and Minding Nature, and her book The Beach Today — a photographic diary documenting marine objects collected over three months of daily beach walks in spring 2020 — was published by Guillemot Press in summer 2021. Riley was longlisted for the 2019 Nan Shepherd Prize for Nature Writing before later that year starting The Nature Library, a travelling library bringing books about nature and the environment to public spaces. She is currently exploring works inspired by marine science and underwater ecosystems, and the role of storytelling in times of climate crisis (sometimes together, sometimes not).

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