Guerrilla gardening

This was taken from Primal Seeds web site. It has a bit of a Maoist reble undertone. Peace!

Guerrilla gardening

Armed with shovels, seeds, and vision, the idea is to garden everywhere. Anywhere.
 
A rural and urban adventure at the threshold of nature and culture, taking back our own time and space, transforming the urban desert and rural wastelands, into a provider of food and a space where people can meet face to face to discuss and participate directly in transforming their towns, cities, and countrysides
 
Learning to produce our own food is essential if we are to ever truly take control of our own lives. It liberates us from the role of passive consumer, remote from real decisions and alienated from nature.

It is a step away from the grip of faschism and the concrete boot on the foot of life.

Growing food requires land. Look around you, it's everywhere.
If not horizontal, it's vertical. There is always somewhere.
Your imagination is the limit,state or proincial parks, municipal parks, trail sides railway embankments(in pots only due to herbicide), back gardens, golf courses, roofs, car parks, overgrown lots, cracks in the pavement. The trees and bushes in your town centre could be growing your crops, right in the heart of the consumer landscape of burger bars, chain stores and supermarkets.

Guerrilla gardeners are out there now. Why not join them in digging for revolution.

I loved that Ted Talk.

Bill Mollison in an interview with Scott London:



Scott London: A reviewer once described your teachings as "seditious."

Bill Mollison: Yes, it was very perceptive. I teach self-reliance, the world's most subversive practice. I teach people how to grow their own food, which is shockingly subversive. So, yes, it’s seditious. But it’s peaceful sedition.

A couple more Ted Talks I watched on yard gardens.
The younger guy mentions a great idea, "sometimes the best progressive idea is a deeply conservative plan."


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8jpmLiGz4gk#
I would have embedded the videos but I am using my phone.
And in The Bronx https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lcSL2yN39JM#

Could we define "rural wasteland"? I get concerned when what is growing naturally somewhere, and is part of a fragile and balanced ecosystems for the animals and critters who need what's growing there to survive, is not thought to be "enough", and we humans should start planting things helter skelter. There are an awful lot of invasive nonnative plants that cause real problems for rural areas.

Could we define "rural wasteland"? I get concerned when what is growing naturally somewhere, and is part of a fragile and balanced ecosystems for the animals and critters who need what's growing there to survive, is not thought to be "enough", and we humans should start planting things helter skelter. There are an awful lot of invasive nonnative plants that cause real problems for rural areas.

People who live in rural areas might be well off squatting on an abandoned farm to do this, or asking a farmer to use a small part of his barnyard to grow a garden, than taking over what might be the best and only habitat not under intensive cultivation.

I agree with Cristo completely on this.

There is plenty of space where humans are concentrated, that could be used in more productive ways. I don't think we need to invade the rural space with this idea, unless they are true wastelands that are full of invasive species and could be rehabilitated by using holistic food production.

Nor do I think that trails are a good idea for food planting.
Where I live the trails are wild spaces, and are utilized by more animals than people. Food along trails habituates animals to human foods and draws them down the trail to find more and also draws them away from their ecological niche and natural cycles which are more reliable. Provincial parks? I don't think I'd appreciate seeing veggies growing in the park, but I'm sure the deer and other grazers would.

I also think that the idea of growing food on railway embankments is a very poor choice as well, even in pots, as the railway right of way is continually polluted with diesel exhaust. I work on the railway and love to pick berries, but don't pick berries anywhere near the tracks.

The ideal place for food production in this sense is in the city, where the majority of people live, where the majority of poor people are concentrated, where most food is imported and expensive, where organic food is rare and or more expensive, where growing a garden is rare, where there is more concrete and pavement than productive soil, and where there is such a massive abundance of organic waste products to rapidly build soil... There are so many reasons why this should be done in the city and the city alone that I'm sure that someone could come up with a much larger list.

That all said, I think the idea of Guerrilla Gardening, indeed any type of extra food production, should be considered (but considered more thoughtfully and consciously) to deal with the radically backwards food system that the planet seems to be largely imprisoned by.

There is plenty of space where humans are concentrated, that could be used in more productive ways. I don't think we need to invade the rural space with this idea

As Bill Mollison said: Leave the bush alone. It is doing quite well without us.

Natural spots do not need our help. Concentrate on the areas that would benefit from our help.
And leave other people's private property alone.
Deciding what should be done on somebody elses property is NOT 'people care'.

I tried some guerilla gardening earlier this year... there was a planter in our local park which never had anything in, so we dug in some compost and planted herbs and veggies and things and stood back to see what would happen. What happened was that every time I went back there were fewer plants (with casualties lying around on the ground), and then the parish council removed the planter altogether! Ho hum!

Urban places are mostly privately owned, or maintained by tax dollars, so it costs everyone when plants show up that shouldn't be there. I'm not sure what all the extra food is about, even if it didn't have ecological balance issues. I think all gardeners learn in a hurry that the animals and birds get the food first if it's not protected. If the animals are healthy and self-sufficient, why would we feed them?

The State parks are the best evidence of what happens when humans think they know better about a natural environment, and it's not good news.

Crumb Clean - Western state parks have rules/laws about not even dropping an apple core or orange peels or half a carrot because it has a ripple effect on what the native animals eat and how they survive. Here's a video about what can happen:

http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=536


It's our tax dollars that pay for the maintenance crews that keep those trails open and safe, and if we are busy causing them a lot more work because some nonnative plant is causing maintenance problems and extra work for the crews, that is expensive.

These ripple effects are huge, and they can go on for hundreds of years

This is the State park motto: LEAVE ONLY FOOTPRINTS - TAKE ONLY MEMORIES.

A couple more Ted Talks I watched on yard gardens.

Thanks Mike. Great choices.

Cristo Balete wrote:
This is the State park motto: LEAVE ONLY FOOTPRINTS - TAKE ONLY MEMORIES.

Almost everyone in a city will know someone who has a yard, so there's not much reason, in my opinion, to go wandering off into state parks planting food. I think food gardens in cities are best put where we currently have useless landscaping. Most cities have huge areas of wasted space.

I guess, Tyler, that begs the question, what is "useless landscape"? If we don't feed the beneficial insects, birds, butterflies, bees and animals we won't have a food system. Those critters need native plants.

If there needs to be some kind of guerrilla activity, why can't it be native plantings and create better biodiversity.

Hi Cristo,

In regards to your question :

why can't it be native plantings and create better biodiversity.

While I agree that native plant habitat is super important, and that there should be some native plants included in food forest and garden design, I believe that more natives will be protected when we concentrate on food production in the urban area. The reason for this is that when we grow much more food in the urban centers, there is that many more areas in the countryside that are not being put under the plow, that many fewer hedgerows removed, that much farther around the water hole that the farmers don't cultivate. We protect wild lands and native plant habitats by not turning it into farmland. This is paraphrasing lessons learned reading from Toby Hemenway.

Another aspect of this type of gardening that protects wild lands is that there is that much less oil and gas exploration, that much less rural road building to access oil and gas, that much less petro-anything... in order to get all that farmed produce into the city (usually in refrigerated trucks as well).

Also in regards to Tyler's quote:

I think food gardens in cities are best put where we currently have useless landscaping.

I don't think that Tyler was referring to native plant landscaping in particular. Most landscaping is not made up of local indigenous plants, but instead are largely made up of Eurasian, or American hybrid shrubs, trees, and herbaceous perennials. Most of it has the purpose of simply greening the area, and has a limited function in butterfly/insect/animal/bee habitat. Some plants in these landscapes certainly do flower and provide habitat, but in comparison to well designed horticulture or food forestry that could be there in it's place (with some natives to encourage what might be there had the city not taken it's space) I have to agree with Tyler in calling most landscaping useless, and that there are huge areas of wasted space in the city that could (and probably should) be put to food production.

While much guerrilla gardening might not be so well designed, it seldom takes away from the landscape, and could easily add diversity. A squash underneath a Japanese maple, or some transplanted nasturtiums climbing a hedge of hybrid cypress, or some kale and beets growing among some hostas... The possibilities are endless.

Cristo Balete wrote: what is "useless landscape"?

Lawns, pruned non-native hedges.

I personally believe that native plants should be included in every garden design, including food gardens.

I personally believe that native plants should be included in every garden design, including food gardens.

Absolutely.

They provide food and habitat for the native pollinators, and other bugs/insects that help maintain a natural balance to your plantings and soil.

If we fill our spaces with non-natives, it is nearly impossible to achieve a relative balance that helps all plants prosper. The native plants help keep a balance that benefits all of the plants within a system. They save us valuable time by performing the functions we need, with no input on our parts. We don't need to spend our time trying to 'fix' a problem that should never have existed.

I harvest in semi wild areas. I don't plant anything. This is very productive from a labor standpoint. No digging, watering, pruning ... I sometimes return to the same spot, but never travel out of my way.
...
If I were to find a garden hidden in a Provincial park, I would harvest everything that is close to ready, then give the whole area a good stomping, in order to discourage the grower from continuing the practice.

Food grown in this manner, is likely to cost much more labor per unit of food and much more in wasted fuel, than food grown in a residential yard.

Call me rigid and ossified and inflexible, but personally I find it difficult to mention guerrilla gardening in the same breath as permaculture.

Guerilla gardening is social activism.

Permaculture is design. Observe, design, implement, accept feedback, fine-tune, and so on. Long-term view, long-term commitment, long-term relationship with the land. PERMAnence, as in PERMAculture. The antithesis of the highly precarious 'guerilla gardening' situation.

A few years ago, when I was growing my fruit & veg in an allotment in London, UK, I recall reading a debate in allotmenteer circles which went something like this: there's a shortage of allotments, long waiting lists of people wishing to have one, so why don't councils let people garden in the cities' vacant lots? And the counterargument: that's rubbish, it takes you a year or two to get your vegetable plot into shape and make it productive, by which time the council or whoever owns the plot will tell you to move on because the lot has been earmarked for development, so all your work will have been in vain.

The counterargument sounded like sound reasoning to me.

My city likes to give me crap about my yard. The one I pay taxes on, the one I pay the mortgage on, the one that is lush and green and edible when my neibors lawns are ugly , unproductive , brown and shorn...
The vacant lots around here, the abandoned houses, bank owned , etc, are overgrown with things nobody planted and are not native.
I can see planting some sunchokes into these places, establishing passion flowers, spreading ground cherries,or other self seeding food plants.
No worse than what is there, nothing I would not want my own yard.
Vegetable gardens are more work than I want to do at my own place, much less someplace I have questionable access or control to.
But planting beans in an empty street planter is just fun and buckwheat in a park lawn is a treat for bees.

Levante, Andras wrote

Permaculture is design.

While I agree that design is the mode to implement permacultural practices, permaculture can not be narrowly defined as design in itself. I know that is not what you are saying; But the essence of what you said narrowly defines permaculture around a certain idea of design. I am not sure that that makes sense outside my brain, so I will simplify it by breaking it down:

Permaculture is a system framed by ethics. When it comes down to it, if those ethics are being practiced, then it is permaculture, regardless of whether we recognize the design, or if the people involved are consciously designing anything.

The activists who plant guerrilla gardens do not believe they are doing any harm to the Earth; and in my opinion, if they are planting food where there are only weeds, or planting food in spaces around and near landscape shrubs, or are tearing grass up out of lane strips between roads and sidewalks and planting actual gardens, then I agree with them, and would go further to say that they are improving the Earth. If food is being grown in the city, the Earth improves. They are caring for the Earth, which is the primary ethic in Permaculture.

These same people are not doing it just to be rebellious. As you mentioned, they are motivated by activism. They are activists for a reason, and that is to look after people. Care for people is the second ethic of permaculture.

The surplus of a guerrilla garden is often being fed to more people than who planted and tended it, and this encourages more people to appreciate and possibly grow real food where food was not being grown before, places that desperately need more and better food, and the system of gardening in vacant urban spaces becomes more normal and accepted. The surplus is returned to the system, and the system of producing food where it is most desperately needed is made more resilient. This reinforcement and reinvestment builds community. Reinvestment of the surplus is the third ethic of permaculture.

The arguments you bring up do have merit, adding to the debate, but in my opinion they miss the mark. I think that this is so because permaculture is far more flexible and potentially wider reaching than your perception of the design principal.

If you have a few minutes to watch the video of Ron Finley: A guerilla gardener in South Central LA, posted by Mike Fedderson after the original post in this thread, you may understand what I mean. Ron was not consciously designing anything when he started. He just had an idea, and since he thought there was no harm in trying it, he did it.

Roberto pokachinni wrote:
Levante, Andras wrote

Permaculture is design.

Permaculture is a system framed by ethics. When it comes down to it, if those ethics are being practiced, then it is permaculture, regardless of whether we recognize the design, or if the people involved are consciously designing anything.

Ethics = good intentions.

You are basically saying that permaculture means simply acting on good intentions, while conscious, careful design is an optional. That's a very slippery path.

Design is tangible, especially once it's implemented.

Ethics are are ideas and words, hence very "flexible". Any action can be explained and fitted into any of the permaculture ethics. You spray toxic pesticides several times a year over thousands of acres growing a monoculture of GM crops, and I can assure you that you don't need a PR firm to help you fit all those elements into the permaculture ethics, including care for the earth ("maximising efficiency and hence needing less cultivated land" or something similar) and care for the people ("feed the world", "create jobs" etc.).

At any rate... Guerrilla gardening and other social and environmental activism are great and worthy of our respect. But in my book I keep them separate from permaculture.

Levente Andras wrote: Ethics = good intentions.

Levente, I'm glad you pointed out that guerrilla gardening is activism as opposed to the design system of Permaculture, or any gardening, for that matter. I think it's an important distinction because the "good intentions" behind activism may only suit the activist.

In the early colonies of America women who had crossed eyes were thought to be witches and were hung. That's activism with good intention, but it was terribly misguided. So do we only have to use good intention as the foundation for guerrilla gardening?

Cristo Balete wrote:

Levente Andras wrote: Ethics = good intentions.

Levente, I'm glad you pointed out that guerrilla gardening is activism as opposed to the design system of Permaculture, or any gardening, for that matter. I think it's an important distinction because the "good intentions" behind activism may only suit the activist.

In the early colonies of America women who had crossed eyes were thought to be witches and were hung. That's activism with good intention, but it was terribly misguided. So do we only have to use good intention as the foundation for guerrilla gardening?

Actually I take a more benign view of social and environmental activism. People need to stand up and resist the abuses of the Establishment and win more breathing room for the little man.

I differ with Bill Mollison's view of revolutionaries ("... the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter"). The freedoms we have today were won through fight, revolution, activism, challenging the powers that be. Without that, we would still be living in a slave-owning society.

Having said that ... To me it doesn't sound right when people conflate permaculture with guerrilla gardening and similar forms of activism. If nothing else, it distracts from what permaculture is supposed to do by definition.

You are basically saying that permaculture means simply acting on good intentions, while conscious, careful design is an optional. That's a very slippery path.

Yes, it is a slippery path, potentially, but so are many very conscious designs that do not work out exactly as planned, and end up being a waste of resources and must be re-done. On scale, guerrilla gardening does very minor potential ecological damage in urban areas, than some permaculture design that for example caused too much water to be held somewhere on land, resulting in waterlogging (a spring) down slope and off the property, but could not be easily foreseen in the initial design. Guerrilla gardening fits a niche that the given activists see needs filling, and the landscape itself seems to be providing. It is looking at a very broken food system and filling a void in it that has great potential for good. When problems arise in a system that we create, we learn, and we change, and we carry on; whether it is permaculture design or not. But I am not exactly saying that "permaculture means acting on good intentions". What I am saying is that the foundational permacultural ethics may be followed, and may simply happen as a matter of course, if someone goes about doing something that is in line with permaculture, whether they consciously are practicing permaculture, or consciously designing with those ethics in exactly in mind, or not, but are simply, by way of their intentions to do the right thing, follow real permacultural ethics and are in fact practicing permaculture de facto (like for instance many people in the back-to-the-land movement who did amazing things just by setting out and trying hard to do the right thing in the sixties and seventies, and who had never heard of permaculture or thought they were designing anything.) I am not saying that all guerrilla gardening is permaculture, just as I would not say that all mechanized farming can be framed as permaculture, but that some is, can be, could be, might be. There is an appropriate use of technology, or technique, or ideology, and I think that guerrilla gardening has the potential to be included for this reason. And Ron Finley is a perfect example of this.

Also, what I am saying is that design comes in many forms and in many minds, and you may be right that you (Levante) are being too rigid.


Cristo said:

"good intentions" behind activism may only suit the activist.

This is true, but the concept you are framing also narrowly defines what guerrilla gardening is, or can be, if we are considering that activism can not have a powerfully positive effect for instance; indeed it may be beneficial for many more people than the activist(s) that implemented it, and perhaps paradigm changing towards permacultural ethics and values, by people who were not ever before exposed to such connections. It may indeed only suit the activist, but in my view, I would say that this is unlikely to be the case in most guerrilla gardening.

Cristo asked:

So do we only have to use good intention as the foundation for guerrilla gardening?

I would say no; certainly not imperatively, absolutely... There are bound to be reckless idiots doing a crappy thing and making claims, no matter who you are, or what you are doing. That's nihilism, and it's a big part of what's wrong in almost any system. However, this negative potential should not discount guerrilla gardening's potential to be used as a tool towards permacultural ends, and that good intention could very well be the foundation for guerrilla gardening, and guerrilla gardening could very well be used by a permacultural practitioner with good design.

There is always the possibility that a good intention might be proven to not be beneficial for the community at large, as you aptly pointed out. A person might not be considering as many variables as he or she should, and thus this person gets into some discrepancy with some neighbors. This happens with many good intentions within permaculture too. Neighbors do not have to agree on everything for systems to be included, or for things to evolve. I think that good intentions are a start, and it is the obligation of the community to put any good intentions to the test, to check the balances, to ensure that it is good for the majority of the people, the Earth, and the happy returns are in order. In the case of Ron Finley, he was challenged by someone who didn't like what he was doing, and he rose to the challenge, and he won his case.

It might not be perfect, but I do not think that guerrilla gardening can be excluded because it was not consciously designed, or implemented under some strict guidelines as such, nor to I consider it to not have potential as a tool of a permacultural designer. I would say that it is a tool, like sheet mulch, and hugulkulture, and swales, that may or may not be appropriate at any given time or place, but might very well be.

I think this starts to fall into the "who decides what is 'real' permaculture" problem. There's a thread here on permies which asks "who is really doing permaculture" and by some criteria, even Geoff Lawton isn't "really" doing permaculture because he makes his primary living from teaching rather than farming, and isn't producing the maximum amount of food from his land (merely tens of thousands of meal's worth of produce). If people are able to grow food in cities, by whatever method - even Guerilla Gardening - this might mean that more land can be returned to what Bill Mollison called "wild nature." The end goal of permaculture, as Mollison expressed it, is to return the bulk of land to wild nature, because, due to the tremendous productivity of permaculture systems, humans do not need that much land for our needs. If that can be achieved, it seems to me, it will be a success borne upon the ethics of Permaculture.

If people are able to grow food in cities, by whatever method - even Guerilla Gardening - this might mean that more land can be returned to what Bill Mollison called "wild nature."

Exactly. Thank you Tyler. And that's a primary reason why it should be included as a potential tool in our toolbox to create, or "design", a better world.

Roberto pokachinni wrote:

You are basically saying that permaculture means simply acting on good intentions, while conscious, careful design is an optional. That's a very slippery path.

Yes, it is a slippery path, potentially, but so are many very conscious designs that do not work out exactly as planned, and end up being a waste of resources and must be re-done. On scale, guerrilla gardening does very minor potential ecological damage in urban areas, than some permaculture design that for example caused too much water to be held somewhere on land, resulting in waterlogging (a spring) down slope and off the property, but could not be easily foreseen in the initial design.

...

if someone goes about doing something that is in line with permaculture, whether they consciously are practicing permaculture, or consciously designing with those ethics in exactly in mind, or not, but are simply, by way of their intentions to do the right thing, follow real permacultural ethics and are in fact practicing permaculture de facto

I don't know about you, but I usually judge the results rather than the intentions. Because, as you just said (above), some designs don't work out as planned even though the intentions are good.

Otherwise, I could claim a wage for the intention of working hard.

Tyler Ludens wrote:I think this starts to fall into the "who decides what is 'real' permaculture" problem. There's a thread here on permies which asks "who is really doing permaculture" and by some criteria, even Geoff Lawton isn't "really" doing permaculture because he makes his primary living from teaching rather than farming, and isn't producing the maximum amount of food from his land (merely tens of thousands of meal's worth of produce). If people are able to grow food in cities, by whatever method - even Guerilla Gardening - this might mean that more land can be returned to what Bill Mollison called "wild nature." The end goal of permaculture, as Mollison expressed it, is to return the bulk of land to wild nature, because, due to the tremendous productivity of permaculture systems, humans do not need that much land for our needs. If that can be achieved, it seems to me, it will be a success borne upon the ethics of Permaculture.

Who is really doing permaculture?

Hmmm... The key to the issue is in the word 'doing'. Larry Santoyo wisely points out in an interview I watched a while ago, that one doesn't 'do' permaculture. Because permaculture - he says (I'm paraphrasing) - is simply a design method, used to design food production systems and human habitats.

To explain this in my own words: I live in a house, whose design is based on a very detailed sketch drawn by me. Do I 'do' architecture? No. I can only say that I live in a product of architectural design.

I'm sure you can draw your own parallels with permaculture from here on.

meth·od
ˈmeTHəd/Submit
noun
a particular form of procedure for accomplishing or approaching something, especially a systematic or established one.

I dunno. "Accomplishing" looks like "doing" to me. So if one is applying the design method of permaculture, seems to me that one is doing it. But this is a semantic hair-splitting of the most extreme kind, in my opinion, especially on this messageboard which is mostly dedicated to what people are doing.

ac·com·plish
əˈkämpliSH/Submit
verb
achieve or complete successfully.

Tyler Ludens wrote:meth·od
ˈmeTHəd/Submit
noun
a particular form of procedure for accomplishing or approaching something, especially a systematic or established one.

I dunno. "Accomplishing" looks like "doing" to me. So if one is applying the design method of permaculture, seems to me that one is doing it. But this is a semantic hair-splitting of the most extreme kind, in my opinion, especially on this messageboard which is mostly dedicated to what people are doing.

ac·com·plish
əˈkämpliSH/Submit
verb
achieve or complete successfully.

Conclusion: Mr Santoyo is in the hair-splitting business of the most extreme kind. He's not 'doing' permaculture, he said so himself.

Cristo Balete wrote:Urban places are mostly privately owned, or maintained by tax dollars, so it costs everyone when plants show up that shouldn't be there.

These ripple effects are huge, and they can go on for hundreds of years

This is the State park motto: LEAVE ONLY FOOTPRINTS - TAKE ONLY MEMORIES.

I've seen the park crew in our municipality as they were spraying pesticides to contain the mosquito plague we had last summer, the ripple effect will include more mosquitoes next year and more pesticides i think.

Land ownership and tax dollar are important parts of of civilization which is apparently endangering the whole planet. Guerrilla gardening is an effort to change the paradigm and save us (humans and the rest) from extinction.

Hey Voy,

It might be in the interest of your conscience to plant some ideas in the municipal parks department about more natural insect control measures. If the waterways are secure and contained unto themselves (as opposed to flowing into a lake) then some goldfish (or some other small trout or minnows) make short work of mosquito larvae. Bat boxes on nearby trees will eventually support a colony that will do a lot of good in negating mature mosquito populations. Swallow nesting boxes do the same as the bat boxes. Be the squeaky wheel and get those folks who are supposed to be protecting the park to do it.

I have been planting the native pawpaw in wooded ravines that are full of invasive species throughout my community. I am putting a plant where it belongs in a place that has all kinds of plants that don't belong. These areas are not maintained in any way other than maybe public works or parks department cutting up a tree that crosses the trail. They are public spaces so anyone can be there. I view it that I am increasing the biodiversity, feeding wildlife, supporting native species, and causing there to be a culinary treat that when discovered may also inspire people to care more for the earth. I won't tell people where I plant them but I don't mind if people find them because they are not just for me. I plant enough pawpaw patches that there will always be some pawpaws available for me at a few of the patches. The right plant given the right start at the right location at the right time will grow and produce fruit on its own. Not every tree is going to make it to maturity but enough will and hopefully the animals that get to feast on them spread enough seeds around that they will naturalize in the wooded ravine.

I made this video that moves right along and shows you how I guerrilla grow from seed to planting.



I have a lot more information about my tools and techniques on this permies post if you want to check it out: Guerrilla Growing on Permies

Guerrilla growing is a legitimate technique if done properly and it doesn't require a large investment or even your own piece of property and it gives people of little means the chance to do something now.