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Guerrilla gardeners planting vegetables in downtown Calgary.

Guerrilla gardening is political gardening, a form of nonviolent direct action, primarily practiced by environmentalists. Activists take over an abandoned piece of land which they don't own to grow crops or plants. The practices are non- violent, unlike guerrilla warfare that can cause bloodshed. Guerrilla gardeners believe in reclaiming land from perceived neglect or misuse and assigning a new purpose for it.

Guerrilla gardeners will sometimes carry out their actions late at night geared up with gardening gloves, watering cans, compost, seeds and plants. They plant and sow a new vegetable patch or flowering garden. Others will work more openly, actively seeking to engage with members of the local community, as illustrated in the examples that follow.

"Pure Genius!!"

One high profile example of Guerrilla Gardening took place in May 1996, when around 500 The Land is Ours activists, including the journalist George Monbiot, occupied 13 acres of derelict land belonging to the Guinness company on the banks of the River Thames in Wandsworth, south London, in order to highlight what they described as "the appalling misuse of urban land, the lack of provision of affordable housing and the deterioration of the urban environment".

A community grew up on the site called "Pure Genius!!" (named ironically after a well known Guinness advertising slogan) that existed for some five and a half months before finally being evicted.

Mayday 2000

On May day 2000, Reclaim the Streets organised a mass Guerrilla Gardening action in Parliament Square, London. After a carnivalesque procession with samba band, and Critical Mass bike ride from Hyde Park, thousands of Guerrilla Gardeners occupied the square and planted vegetables and flowers. A maypole was erected around which many of the gardeners danced. Banners hung in the square read; 'Resistance is Fertile', 'Let London Sprout', 'Capitalism is Pants', and 'The Earth is a Common Treasury for All,' the latter being a quote from the seventeenth century Digger Gerrard Winstanley. An Indymedia public access terminal was set up in the new allotment, and the statue of Winston Churchill was given a green turf mohican.

Leaf Street Community Garden

Leaf Street is an acre of land in Hulme, Manchester that was once an urban street until turfed over by Manchester City Council. Local people, facilitated by Manchester Permaculture Group, took direct action in turning the site into a thriving community garden [1].

A Long History

Guerrilla gardening has a long history. A book titled "Guerrilla Gardening" was published in 1983 by John F. Adams and aimed at encouraging amateur gardeners to grow heirloom varieties that are not the result of corporate hybridization. The term appears on Bruce Sterling's Veridian mailing list [2] in December 1998. In Northern Utah apple trees commonly grow along the banks of canals. Asparagus grows along the smaller ditch banks. Many of these plants were seeded 150 years ago by the workers who dug the canals, by burying lunch's apple core in the freshly dug soil, or by surreptitiously spreading seeds along a new ditchbank. Guerrilla gardening continues today as individuals secretly plant fruit trees, edible perennials, and flowers in parks, along bike trails, etc. Some guerrilla gardeners do so for the purpose of providing food in case of emergency.

Further reading

  • Lamborn, P., and Weinberg, B. (Eds.), (1999), Avant Gardening: Ecological Struggle in The City and The World. Autonomedia. ISBN 1-57027-092-9

See also

External links

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