Guerilla gardening for ‘beauty’s sake’ - Anne Boulton

Despite owning a home and having a garden of my own, there are still so many potential spaces out there that are just begging for someone to love them.

Often these are public spaces that go unnoticed, simply due to their transient nature. But there are a group of devoted “greeners” who want to take those public spaces and make them beautiful just for beauty’s sake. To play on the metaphor, they are guerilla gardeners enlisted to battle against the bald dirt and littered earth of our cities.

Guerilla gardening is often defined, but not entirely restricted to, the covert beautification of public spaces. So technically, it’s like a pretty kind of vandalism.

There are a number of websites devoted to encouraging the greening of public spaces through guerilla gardening. On guerrilagardening.org, they show before and after photos — the “before” photo is taken under the cloak of night.

Often the gardeners work this way to avoid “interference.” And why not? My mother often said it’s better to beg forgiveness than ask permission. Who in their right mind would restrict a row of garlic? Or how about a barberry hedge? Certainly not the birds!

What might a fresh new space say to the folks who walk past it every day? Where once there were cigarette butts and chips bags, now sprout geraniums and gerberas. Might not it say something about the kind of pride one can feel about a city whose own dwellers love and respect it? Who care enough about strangers that they want them to smile when they walk past their wildflower patch?

So how can you do it? A couple of ways to be sure.

Just plant something alive and vibrant in an otherwise desolate and wanting space that doesn’t belong to you. Think about the amount of foot traffic it gets, if any. If your plant is a vine, can it grow against something to support it? Downtown areas are often in need of a green thumb.

You might also consider the plants hardiness and the type of space. A shrub would be less likely ripped up than would a tulip, for example, in a downtown corridor. But tulips might work well in another space. Just use your gardener’s intuition.

There is what’s known as “reverse guerilla gardening.” That’s when you steal clippings from plants or rip off a few seed pods (dead-heading, you know is good for a plant!) and sow them elsewhere.

Seed bombs are a surefire way to get your seeds into hard to reach, hard to sow spaces. They can be made at home from compost, recycled paper, egg cartons, and seeds. The idea is launch them and have the rain help to germinate the seeds over a bit of time. Wildflowers seeds are the best for this.

For a PDF print-off of the seed bomb (or, sweetly subversive — the green grenade), visit guerrillagardening.org, and look for “Seed bombs” under the “Tips” tab.

Guerilla gardening is a harmless way to tell your city you care about it and the people in it.

Anne Boulton is an avid gardener who lives in Sudbury. Contact her at [email protected] or visit her blog at boultonanne.typepad.com/greenboots.

- Posted by Vivian Scinto