I’ve published a book. It’s a growmance. An eco-comedy. A year of digging dangerously. The eco-worrier in me is going into anxiety over-drive as it’s being released on Amazon. Amazon is the environmental campaigner’s arch enemy, tax avoider, encourager of excessive consumerism and polluter.

But I’m also pondering a wider question: if behavioural change is one of the ways in which we can all help combat the climate and ecological crisis, we need to do this through reaching and persuading the disengaged, through reaching a new, wider audience. And one way is potentially working with Amazon, and its search engines. It’s a moral balancing act.

If you publish on Amazon, you get access to a fascinating tool: Publisher Rocket. This displays the topics/themes/categories that book readers worldwide are searching for. On closer inspection, it is apparent that books on climate action, green living etc, receive very little traffic.

Ham & High: Debbie Bourne calls her new book The High Heeled Gardener, a 'growmance'Debbie Bourne calls her new book The High Heeled Gardener, a 'growmance' (Image: Debbie Bourne)

Yes, there are lots of serious, doom-mongering, factual books on climate change, which the already climate-aware continue to search for and read. However, there are very few fiction titles and lighthearted books which inspire the general reader to incorporate green living into their everyday lives. And there’s certainly no such genre as an eco-romance, let alone one which has a humorous take on climate action, until now! Hopefully soon there will be other new eco-search categories. So come on all you Hampstead literati, get writing!

In the meantime, back to the The High-Heeled Gardener - my book. Through the writing of this book, I’ve learnt how to grow my own cocktails, cosmetics (nettle shampoo anyone?) and edible bouquets. Yum! I’ve had rocket races with my son and planted a pizza patch: I’ve learnt vital things like the importance of shears, and how to be best in choux. How humus is organic matter as well as being a dip and that secateurs are not a figure of speech! Permaculture is not a 1970s hair style and plants do have sex lives.

So, get thinking how you can have a summer of eco-action whilst having fun in the process. This month, with Wimbledon a couple of weeks away, it’s all about game, set and mulch.

Debbie Bourne is a Think&Do Camden Activator.