Guerrilla Gardening
Guerrilla Gardening is the act of illegally gardening in spaces that are not technically yours to garden, to make subversive statements, protests, or as a form of direct action. The idea goes all the way back to 1973!
In other words, guerrilla gardeners take unloved or neglected land and assign it a new purpose – to make things pretty or useful. Cities are full of waste land and unused public spaces which people walk past every day without noticing. Spaces which would look a lot better if they were green!
Some guerrilla gardeners prefer to work at night when they can be more discreet. Others are activists who’ll do so in broad daylight, when everyone can see what they’re doing. Some choose to grow flowers to make places brighter. Others choose to grow fruit or vegetables (though care should be taken not to grow anything edible in places where plants might absorb toxins).
I don’t know why I haven’t posted any guerrilla gardening things on this blog yet, and I think I should change that.
In the meantime, here are some links!
GuerrillaGardening.org
Guerrilla gardening: a report from the frontline
How to Start Guerrilla Gardening
Ron Finley: The Gangsta Gardener
What is guerrilla gardening?
To reiterate others, when gardening make sure to keep accessibility, invasive species, and potential poisons in mind.
Possible (and incomplete) list of things to keep in mind
1. Does it get it the way of paths or walkways? Consider what it would be like for someone walking, or with a wheelchair, stroller, white cane…
2. Check the species isn’t invasive in your area. If you’re in north america here’s a useful wikipedia page
3. Try to avoid plants that have allergenic pollen. Here’s another list of plants to avoid
4. You might want to avoid poisonous plants. Of course, a lot of plants are poisonous in large quantities so this isn’t always of the utmost priority to completely avoid all of them. Here’s another list.
5. Does the block access to or view of important information? For example, can people still read directions or access water fountains? Consider people at all different heights from little kids to tall people.
Anything else people can think of?
Y’all are really great, you know that? @gayingupspace too, I saw your post.
Even while writing that, I was thinking about writing out some advice about how to be responsible about this, but it was late and I was tired. This is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind!
Anyone else have any thoughts?
r/guerrillagardening exists as a community in case anyone has questions they want to ask. It’s a pretty welcoming community (and yes I mod there).
The biggest thing when planning a guerrilla gardening project is assessing things like: 1) is it far from where you live? 2) how long do you think you’ll be living where you are ? 3) is anyone else involved in a committed way? 4) who DOES own the land? They’ll be listed in the county tax records. Do you know if they have any plans for it?
You want to figure out the time aspect, basically. There’s no point spending a lot of money and time on improving soil in a space that you know will be bulldozed in a year. But there’s things that you can grow in just a year that will be fun and beneficial. If you’re moving in a few months, hold off on the project, unless you have other people involved.
The thing that I notice most with guerrilla gardening is that the projects don’t tend to last, because they’re often fairly impulsive and not thought out, by apartment dwellers who by necessity move on.
That said, my favorite technique is to buy a bag of bird seed full of black oil sunflowers. Buy it whenever you find it cheap at the store. Hang onto it until it’s your safe planting date to plant things outdoors (you can look this up online if you don’t know). Watch your weather, and right before the next major rain storm, go out there with a stick or piece of rebar and just stab a ton of holes and drop the seeds in, cover them up, let the rain water them in. Sunflowers are native to North America and are an excellent, cheap choice for most North American guerrilla gardeners. And since you bought it as bird feed, you know the birds will enjoy it, not to mention all the people who might stumble upon it. You can go bold and public with sunflowers, people sometimes think they are Officially Sanctioned by local governments. Avoid planting in places that are sprayed with weed killer though.
If you’re feeling extra rich or generous or like you’ll be there for awhile and it isn’t going to be developed anytime soon, then you can start doing stuff like sprinkling coffee grounds around, leaves you find in bags on the curbs, whatever homemade compost you can come up with, etc. Improving the soil is actually a really important ecological act, and can have much much longer lasting consequences than just throwing some annual seeds around. Healthy soil makes for healthy plants, but it takes time to develop.
