Apartment Therapy New York | Guerilla Gardening

Guerilla Gardening

We hadn't even heard of guerilla gardening before reading Heavy Petal's A brief history of the seed ball. That opened a whole world of resources on the subject:

• By guerilla gardening, Liz Christy and the Green Guerillas formed the Liz Christy Garden in 1973. It's NYC's first community garden....

• Seed balls (or seed bombs, earth dumplings) are often used by guerilla gardeners in reclaiming derelict land in their neighborhoods. Find out how to make them at Path to Freedom. Or see this Green Guerillas Fact Sheet.

• Seed balls were pioneered by Japanese microbiologist Masanobu Fukuoka.

We found all of this fascinating and thought you might, too. And somehow the stories of guerilla gardeners working so hard to improve unused lots made us feel more passionate and energized about our personal gardening projects at home.

Comments (6)

Now if only I can make a bigger potato cannon to launch my seed bombs.

posted by art on June 18th 2007 at 11:20am
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Anybody notice all the Green programming on Sundance?
There was a terrific profile of one frantic planting night with guerilla gardeners . . .

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/06/guerrilla_garde.php
http://www.sundancechannel.com/discussions/Board/390064648

posted by guido on June 18th 2007 at 12:29pm
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One more, with much more info on the programming, from Garden Rant
http://www.gardenrant.com/my_weblog/2007/04/sundance_brings.html

posted by guido on June 18th 2007 at 12:31pm
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Hurray for guerilla gardening! Here's a link to a lovely article from the Guardian about UK guerilla gardeners:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2006/04/20/gardeners_without_borders.html

posted by tin_angel on June 19th 2007 at 1:41am
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I would advise anyone not to use Christmas ornaments as indicated in that fact sheet - the broken glass it will leave all over the site will be a danger to any wildlife that is encouraged to be there by the subsequent plants

posted by Violetsrose on June 19th 2007 at 2:56am
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Speaking of Guerilla Gardening, what are the laws for planting flowers around the trees on our city streets? I'd like to add a planter box and plant flowers around some old sad trees on 21st Street. Is this against the law? Who has the right to garden in these planters?

posted by Vanessa in New York on June 19th 2007 at 5:33am
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