Flowery warfare against gray wastelands

Empty private lot around New York City. When the night falls, a small group of people sneaks to the site with shovels and saplings. By the morning, the lot has been turned into a small garden. Neighbors around the area scratch their heads in amazement: what is going on here?

The phrase “guerrilla gardening” was first used by New York based Green Guerilla group in 1970’s. The incident described above, did really happen when guerillas were taking baby steps: lead by Liz Christy, the group's major initiative was indeed to carry out an overnight garden in NYC area. Since then, these green thumbs have become global; green guerrilla groups have sprout all around the world from New Zealand to Great Britain. Throughout the years, gardening has taken many forms from overnight gardens to planting trees in broad daylight. Nowadays, guerillas are even writing books on their favorite activity.

Guerrilla gardening can be described as political gardening. The aim is basically to question and re-consider land ownership. Forgotten and ignored areas that nobody's going to build on – so why not to turn it into something useful and meaningful for people around the area? Also, these gardening guerrillas want to simply add more green into urban environment. Big cities are filled with spots in need of motivated green thumbs: roadsides, trashy parking lots, abandoned backyards, massive suburbs far away from nature.

Basically green guerrillas are breaking the law; attacking private property with saplings isn't any more legal than squatting an empty house. Still, in some cities local authorities and guerrilla gardeners have worked out an unofficial agreement. In London the guerrillas can usually work during the day – sometimes even with the help of people living in the area. What comes to question of vandalism, suppose there are worse kinds of vandalism than planting flowers for everybody's delight? Besides, the city with active green guerrilla group gets loads of green decorating done for free.

To try out being a gardening guerrilla, one doesn't have to find big organized group. One simple action one can do is manufacture so called ”seed bombs”. They're usually small balls made out clay, fertilizer and seeds of different flowers. After making these bombs, you can go out and find a spot in need of some green nature – and bombs away!

Being an environmental activist doesn't always take form of tying yourself into a bulldozer – it can be urban and delightful for many people.


Elina Sutela

For more information:

http://www.guerrillagardening.org/index.html
http://www.guerrillagardening.org/pimpyourpavement.html
http://www.greenguerillas.org/
http://www.gruenewelle.org/
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=8075862560861551314#