wool & stars

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.