book: On Guerrilla Gardening

I’ve noticed it to be true that trash on the ground attracts other trash; I see evidence of it every day on the street in front of our apartment. We’re in a strange zone where one street dead-ends into another, with a parking lot on the corner that attracts things like broken bottles and shopping carts and random articles of clothing. Most of the garbage and recycling cans in the area have been tagged. The garages next to ours were spray-painted with a huge set of eyes and a mouth; the sidewalk in front of our courtyard was decorated with a painted purple heart. There have been worse things. I felt lucky when I saw the heart.

“We know we should take greater responsibility for the health of the planet by changing our habits of consumption and production. Gardening is one step in the right direction — and guerrilla_gardening is making that step regardless of the obstacles. Choosing to cultivate someone else’s neglected land is taking responsibility where others have not.”

I recently read On Guerrilla Gardening and quite enjoyed it, both content-wise and as a physical object: the cover design, endpapers, and sewn binding all contribute to a beautiful book. It’s divided into two parts, 1: The Movement (a history of guerrilla gardening) and 2: The Manual (plant choices, where to plant, how to do the planting — sneaky, or in plain sight) and opens with the motto “Let’s Fight the Filth with Forks and Flowers!”

The author, Richard Reynolds, shares how he got into guerrilla gardening, as well as the stories of others such as Adam Purple and his Garden of Eden in New York City (see the photo at top.) Reynolds details what we (as fellow gardeners) fight when choosing to work on unowned soil: scarcity, neglect, wilderness, lawns, pollution. The book touches on gardens as public art, as sources for gathering food, and as connections for communities. Following his metaphor of a battle, he asks: What is victory? Is it watching something develop over time? One of the interesting aspects of this kind of project/activity is that it is never done, never over. I have been re-inspired by this book to tackle the planters in front of our building, out at street level. It will take some tough flowers to survive the inevitable bottles and cans that are regularly dumped there. But the planting will be worth it. Borrow or buy the book, and check out the website too: guerrillagardening.org.

On Guerrilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening without Boundaries, by Richard Reynolds. Bloomsbury, 2008.