Guerilla Gardening, Richard Reynolds
www.guerrillagardening.org Watch guerilla gardeners transform Elephant & Castle, London. When Richard Reynolds began planting flowers secretly at night outside his tower block in South London, he had no idea that he was part of a growing global movement committed to combating the forces of neglect, land shortage and apathy towards public spaces. But before long, his blog GuerrillaGardening.org had attracted other guerrillas from around the world to share their experiences of the horticultural frontline, and is now a focal point for guerrilla gardeners everywhere, with over 4000 people enlisted as recruits. On Guerrilla Gardening is Reynolds’s lively, colourful treatise on why people illicitly cultivate land and how to do it yourself. From discreetly beautifying corners of Montreal to striving for green communal space in Berlin and sustainable food production in San Francisco, from Christmas trees on London roundabouts to the political agitations of landless workers in Brazil, Reynolds charts a battle that people worldwide are fighting on many different fronts. Along the way he unearths the movement’s notable historic advances by seventeenth-century English radicals, a nineteenth-century American entrepreneur and public-spirited artists in 1970s New York. Reynolds has researched the subject with guerrilla gardeners from thirty different countries, and compiles their advice on what to grow where, how to cope with adverse environmental conditions, how to seed-bomb …
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Tagged with: Adventure • American Entrepreneur • Apathy • Bloombury Publishing • Christmas Trees • Cityscape • Communal Space • Elephant and Castle • English Radicals • Environment • Environmental Conditions • Focal Point • gardening • Gardening Book • Global Movement • Guerilla • Guerilla Gardeners • Guerrilla • Guerrillas • Landless Workers • planting flowers • plants • Police • Public Spaces • Richard Reynolds • Roundabouts • South London • Sustainable Food Production • Tower Block • Transformation • Undercover • Urban • York Reynolds
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From page 42 of Perennial Gardening Guide on
Eryngium Giganteum (aka Sea Holly or Miss Willmott’s Ghost) … British plantswoman Ellen Willmott, it is said, used to secretly scatter seeds of this whenever she went visiting other people’s gardens.”
I’m glad to say that since my encounter with the police here there have been no further incidents. It was a remarkably depressing night and I think that perhaps the presence of the camera from The Guardian newspaper made the police over react. The film is here on You Tube thanks to my publisher, Bloomsbury, who helped me put together “On Guerrilla Gardening”.
I think what the guerrilla gardeners are doing is amazing.
nice
hes on my site
As expressed in the film, the interpretation of those actions as ‘Criminal Damage’ is simply exasperating. I’m moved to find out what qualifies as such. ‘Green’ Panthers anyone?
Oh I know Elephant and Castle well as I used to study there. Some guerrilla gardeners sown wild flowers at a roundabout near where I live, the Hogarth Roundabout, a few years ago. It was beautiful but the council came and mowed it all down saying it was too distracting to road users.
Fun. I wonder if the flowers were left there and kept growing? Here in the states the people almost certainly would have been ticketed when the police came. In this video it looks like they get a verbal warning. Also, here, if they’d come back and succeeded in planting the flowers, the city would have come and pulled them out within a few days.
Well done!
I can confirm that 10 months on the flowers are doing very well, that more have been added and that a few weeks after this first dig the police drove past waved and honked a friendly toot. I think the camera with us made them over react. It was a rare incident.
Richard
that is why you never stop planting, also why if more people did it, the police would give up with there stupid shit all together
maybe try doing your gardening in the middle of the day wearing a hi-viz jacket? I doubt anyone would call the police then, as you’ll look like legit council workers.
i hate this show with a passion its lame and it makes me want to smash my tv set every time its on !!!
This is not “a show”! I think you might be confusing this documentary footage filmed by The Guardian newspaper with the shit that’s on Channel 10 in Australia that masquerades under the name Guerrilla Gardeners. I hope so anyway, because everyone here is a volunteer and ended up having a confrontation with the police, largely I think because we agreed to let a news journalist tag along!
best show ever yay!yay!
Cameras change everything with police
just keep that in mind
What I dont get is that they call it public land, therefore the public own it and you guys are members of the public therfore you should be able to improve the land in question by landscaping it by planting without being subjected to possible arrest. And how can creating a flower bed on a patch of weed ridden ground be criminal damage. The Law is an ass and should be used to catch real criminals and not people like yourselves who are trying to do good. Keep up the good work!!
Ministry of Sound!
Overgrow the government for a better urban environment !
criminal damage????????????
My advise for GuerillaGardenining Warfare: Lesson No 1: How not to be spotted: Hide. There is no better hiding than behind a uniform. Use safety reflective jacket – try to look like a city/utility worker. If all of you were wearing the same safety jackets, police would not bother to stop: they would THINK you are authorized / sent by the city authorities. Bonus points if you are using safety-helmet : no-one is wearing one if not ordered to
Good luck!
You are the worst-dressed gardener– you’re not dressed for the job! ;P
Good work nonetheless!
@grahamjpjones:
It’s their law, & as such, is illegitimate
“The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written & natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.”
- Emma Goldman
not sure how much this applies here, but wtf i can’t believe even this has been taken over by the evil.
people are actually – removing plants. and calling that guerilla gardening.
there’s no such thing as weeds, as all real gardeners know. those plants are very important stages in nature reclaiming sites, if they were left then eventually the woodland comes back.
guerilla gardeninh is supposed to be about RE-GREENING NON-GREEN SPACES, not destroying wildlife habitat that reclaimed on its own