A Worldwide Movement To Reclaim Disused Space
From London to New Zealand, Brooklyn to Bombay, Vienna to Tokyo an underground movement is gathering together, after dark, its' members armed with forks, trowels and seeds.
Reclaiming disused space, these green-fingered outlaws are transforming unloved land with tulips, sunflowers and lavender.
Richard Reynolds who is the guerrilla movement's figurehead at the moment and author of On Guerrilla Gardening says, "I thought I'd invented it, but in fact, when I googled 'guerrilla gardening,' I found it was everywhere." Must be collective consciousness!
Neglected land gets a facelift across the innercity landscape as roundabouts fill up with flowers and road dividers fill with lavender. Whether to grow crops or plants or just to give an emotional boost through brightening the place up with flowers, guerrilla gardening creates a sense of social accountability for the places we live and work in, or walk past everyday.
Not all guerrilla gardeners work under the cover of darkness some work in more community-based projects in daylight! Richard and about 400 volunteers in London gather at night to plant, prune and tend. Councils are perplexed and arrest is often threatened by the police as essentially they are on someone else's patch, albeit disused.
Examples Of Guerilla Gardening
Probably the first Guerrilla Gardeners met in a derelict lot in New York in 1973. Their garden is still going strong cared for by volunteers and is now part of the NYC's park department. In 1996, 1000 people gathered together in Copenhagen to create a garden in one single night on an empty piece of land. Brussels just joined in with International Guerrilla Sunflower Day.
Community gardens and volunteer projects can bring people together - literally creating communities. In Richmond, Virginia a group called Tricycle Gardens is transforming some of the city's poorest neighbourhoods with community gardens that grow fresh produce.
Another inspirational project started in Richmond where volunteers installed around 50 birdhouses along the city streets with local birds such as wrens and finches. At Spitalfields City Farm in London recently, young kids were shocked at the sight of a scary beast that they had never encountered before - "what is that freaky lookin' fing?" It was a chicken.
"Green spaces in cities are constantly threatened by development," says Richard, "which impacts on biodiversity, flood risk and urban heat levels. And simply making the area prettier can have a positive impact on crime and community spirit. What I'm doing isn't going to stop global warming, but it is part of being environmentally aware."
Awareness And Respect
It is about being aware of your own environment - the environment you interact with everyday on your way to work or to the shops. As you wander along the road and watch someone in front of you jettison a piece of rubbish onto the ground, just like councils not using public space wisely, it has an impact on our sense of respect. When we do not respect our local environment, we are not showing respect to all the other people we have to share it with. Respect is the foundation stone of community.
Actress and eco-warrior Darryl Hannah met up with Richard when she was last in London as she wanted to see what the UK guerrilla gardeners had been up to.
"For me, one thing that needs to happen is self-reliance and local economies" says Darryl. "Always support the local community if you can. If you can't grow your own food, support your local farmers' market. And if somebody is making clothes in your community, that is better than somebody using slave labour in China."
An Actress Who Cares About The Enviroment
Having spent time living in a teepee and last year getting arrested for campaigning to save a community farm in South Central LA, Darryl Hannah is a card-carrying Guerrilla Gardener. Her protest involved hanging in a tree for three weeks and she was one of the last people removed from the site, which had experienced its own regenerative organic facelift after the riots in the early nineties.
"I'm still very upset that we could not save the farm. It's exactly the kind of thing we need right now. People say adopting a low-carbon lifestyle is expensive, but here were people who did not have a lot of money, growing medicinal and organic food for local consumption in one of the most polluted and dangerous parts of the city. It's exactly what we need to replicate, and it was destroyed."
You can see her and this amazingly vibrant community on one of her Love Life eco-videos on her website, www.dhlovelife.com. Her video insights are beautifully shot, funky and inspiring… interviews with eco-luminaries like David Suzuki, guides to becoming carbon neutral or raw food recipes, and avoiding lipsticks with petrochemicals. In her first video, she takes a sip of the biofuel that she uses to fuel her car - it's recycled French fry vegetable oil.
"I know that the younger generation is doing things that are so ingenious. And for them it's not a matter of a political belief or an environmental stance. It's really just common sense. I really think that's what it should have come down to a long time ago."
Growing Your Own Garden
Meanwhile people are starting to look for places to grow their own foods in the heart of the city. Sebastian Mayfield is the co-founder of Food Up Front and a few years ago he petitioned his neighbours in south London to join him growing vegetables in their front gardens, windowsills and balconies as he was still on a waiting list to get an allotment. This form of gardening is guerrilla because it is changing our view of what a garden is.
"We wanted to reconnect people living in cities with food. You don't have to own acres of countryside like Jamie Oliver to grow your own vegetables - anyone can do it using pretty much any old space," says Mayfield. Fellow-founder Zoe Lujic adds "It's about protecting the urban environment. All too often front gardens are concreted over for convenience with no thought for the important role they play."
"The seeds we recommend people start with are simple salads - rocket, spinach - and herbs," Mayfield says. "The important thing is not to try too much too quickly."
Projects like this one are shooting up across the UK and beyond and are not simply to grow your own food but also to create urban farming. "We grow salad leaves on our own sites because they make the best use of the small, urban spaces available in Hackney and because green salad is worth quite a lot," says Julie Brown, co-ordinator of north London project Growing Communities.
Growing Communities runs a lively farmers market and organic vegetable scheme selling both its own produce and veg from farms around London. Again gardening in your front garden or on small urban farms brings people together, but as Julie Brown points out. "Urban farming has to be seen not just as something warm and friendly but an activity that is viable within the economy to meet our ultimate aim of bringing about economic change."
And look at the inspiration you can create, new London Mayor Boris Johnson is planting 10,000 new trees funded by cutting the Mayor's publicity budget. "The planting of 10,000 street trees will improve the residential streets that need them most with the planting programme directed at deprived areas that often have no trees at all," says the new Mayor. "Trees improve the street environment in which Londoners live and work so I will do all I can to save the trees we have and campaign for more trees to protect London's open spaces.
Check out On Guerrilla Gardening on Amazon - you get a free packet of sunflower seeds too!