Under the cover of darkness the first bomb hits with a thud. The air is peppered with soft thuds as five more land. Now the infantry use the water cannon and blasts water at the target but the bombs don’t explode, not yet. It will be weeks maybe a month before the results of this battle are visible.
It is a war that many are not aware of and it is taking place all over the world, from London to Melbourne, guerrilla gardeners are out there. Armed with spades and forks they travel at night, defying the power of the state, in an all-out war to beautify the world’s neglected public spaces.
Their past victories are all around for anyone to see. Floral displays on roundabouts, abandoned private land and council estates are all likely down to guerrilla gardeners. They may not be up there with Superheroes such as Batman, Superman and Catwoman but they still have to keep their identities a secret and go out at night when they garden in public spaces. It is an unfortunate fact that the vast percentages of guerrilla gardeners don’t have permission from government authorities as they don’t often take kindly to their interference.
“I will do it at night or when it’s pouring with rain,” said Richard Reynolds, founder of website www.guerrillagardening.org and author of “On Guerrilla Gardening.” “When it’s a new location it’s better out of hours. You’re less likely to have confrontation with a contractor,” said the 32-year-old, whose job is in advertising. “You don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Some brave members have been operating on the sly during the daytime to add their own touches to the city when no one is watching. It isn’t just those you would suspect either, a London City banker has been sprinkling thousands of wild flower seeds in the capital for weeks during his daily walk to work and all because he said he wants to brighten up the city.
The origin of guerrilla gardening is uncertain but a group called Green Guerrillas was set up in 1970 by New Yorker Liz Christy to garden in neglected public spaces. Today the area where the New York group first developed is now protected by the city and maintained by volunteers.
Reynolds claims that local authorities typically have one of two reactions to guerrilla gardening; they either turn a blind eye or are dead set against it. For instance Lambeth was encouraging but asked that gardeners ‘got in touch’ before carrying out any projects. Southwark was less welcoming.
“By its very nature, the guerrilla gardening initiative seems to need to operate in a covert and surreptitious manner and acts on an assumption that there is no other means of achieving its aims,” a Southwark Council Spokesman said. “This is something that the council would take issue with.”
Despite this he intends to carry on and rally government support for public gardening with a ‘Pimp your Pavement’ campaign.
“I’m seeing if I can change some policy in London to get local authorities not just too silently tolerate what we do, but to support it, as has happened in Berlin, Vancouver, and Amsterdam,” he said.
Reynolds hasn’t just limited himself to the UK; he has also gardened in public spaces in France, Libya, Germany and the Czech Republic. From his travels he has observed that successful guerrilla gardeners all share three similar traits: Optimism, imagination and they are all a bit mischievous.
The boom of social networking sites and blogs thanks to the internet means that guerrilla gardeners can plan to meet up and work together from all over the world and even go so far as to organise simultaneous gardening events in different countries. Such as: International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day on May 1st where participants are set to plant sunflowers in public spaces. The event was first created by a group of guerrilla gardeners in Brussels called Brussels Farmer in Belgium, who have been planting sunflowers all over Brussels. To date a Facebook page that Reynolds set up for the event now has nearly 700 potential participants.
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May 7th, 2010 at 8:51 AM
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