Guerrilla Gardening

The town was sleeping and no one was to be seen, but we wanted that. To be caught would mean failure
Guerrilla team
Weeks of planning weighed on our shoulders

I checked the equipment: seeds, trowels, chemicals, bulbs. The ground was hard with frost. We all looked at each other thinking the same thing… would the daffodils grow?

This is guerrilla gardening: a movement that started in the 1970s and has been gaining momentum ever since. In a nutshell it is a non-violent, eco-friendly form of activism in which areas of unloved urban land are tended to by the public. It is often carried out as a political gesture in order to highlight the Government’s ownership and misuse of land.

Activist collective ‘Reclaim the Streets’ organised a notable gathering of guerrilla gardeners outside London’s Parliament Square on May Day in 2000. Thousands came together planting vegetables and flowers, dancing around maypoles and restyling Churchill’s hair into a turf mohican.

Other guerrilla gardeners are motivated by purely environmental reasons. They want to invest in the land – to use urban spaces to grow flower gardens or crops. They venture out at night enlisting the help of local community members; by morning the urban desert is transformed – brightened by flowers, scented by herbs, a utopian vision fertile with possibility.

Richard Reynolds, the man behind guerrillagardening.org and author of On Guerrilla Gardening, encourages local people to form such groups. “My online community page is the best place to do this,” he says. “It’s a matter of registering your interest... or at best just getting out there solo and encouraging others to follow!”

This was our revolution – a chance to take back the derelict side-streets in Cardiff’s run-down, student-infested, beer-bottled Cathays. We created a small garden of hardy crops to delight passers-by forevermore. A local resident, Lila Elliot, 23, emerged to comment on our hard work. “I love it,” she says. “I don’t have a garden so every time I walk past, it will make me smile.”

Mission accomplished.

by Cari Thomas & Sofie Jenkinson
5th December 2008

See also:

Battle strategy:

  1. Set co-ordinates: Find an unloved patch of land somewhere near your home.
  2. Enlist troops: Set a date, then begin enrolling supporters. If you are struggling, click onto www.guerrillagardening.org and spread the word across the community forums.
  3. Take up arms: Choose your plants wisely – think hardy, colourful and seasonal. Then try to find a cheap source. www.primalseeds.org detail suitable plants. They suggest sprinkling mustard seeds everywhere – a plant that helps to fertilise the soil.
  4. Chemical warfare: Resort, if necessary, to arming yourself with chemicals. Many guerrilla gardeners use compost to nourish the soil, but those without space employ the help of red worms to decompose their food into rich compost.
  5. Seed bombs: For hard-to-reach areas mould seeds and soil together to make seed bombs, then aim well.
  6. Never leave a plant behind: Don’t give up on your patch of land – return to water and weed.