Guerrilla Gardening

Have you been watching the Guerrilla Gardeners show on Channel 10?

Personally, I find the show a little too stagey. What they’re doing is technically against the law, but when you film it and broadcast it on national tv, it’s hard to feel like they’re taking any real risks! So far, the worst that has happened is that one council ripped out their palm trees – since those were on a roundabout at the junction of 5 roads, and were blocking visibility for drivers, I can’t say I disagree. They knew visibility was an issue, so why didn’t they just plant some native groundcovers or flowers? Probably because that wouldn’t take long enough to fill a half-hour tv show, I suppose.

Plus, I’m sure they’re nice people, but they don’t stick around and take care of their new patch. They just kind of hope that people who live nearby will do the right thing. This seems a bit against the spirit of real guerilla gardening.

On the other hand, perhaps it will inspire people to take a bit of pride in their suburb.

But I love the idea of guerrilla gardening in general. It started a years ago with people in London and New York deciding that they’d take care of a bare patch of ground if local councils weren’t going to do anything about it. Now it’s a global movement to beautify and improve our urban spaces, to bring some life back into the concrete jungle.

Apart from bringing a sense of ownership and community to an area, it also has environmental benefits. As long as you choose your plants carefully – low-water, local, no invasive weeds – then you can’t really go wrong with adding more CO2-sucking life to your suburb.

Of their techniques, I most like the idea of seed bombs (a mix of mud and seeds, thrown into areas that aren’t easily reached), and gardening with a nicely-dressed girl so you look less like trouble-makers should any cops take an interest in what you’re doing

You can see more about it at GuerrillaGardening.org, and there’s an Australian section in their Community forums. There was also a short 7:30 Report segment on it a little while ago (video and transcript available).

Would you give guerrilla gardening a go? Do you know anywhere that could do with a few cheerful plants?

Fresh green links: Earth Hour

So tomorrow night at 8:30pm, it’s Earth Hour 2009. You hadn’t forgotten, had you? Nevermind, here’s a bunch of ideas for what you can do to show the world that you (and millions of other people) want strong action on climate change:

Making Earth Hour happen in your town (pdf file) – tips and suggestions for what you can do to organise your own event, if your city isn’t doing anything special.

Earth Hour blogger kit – with videos, images and information you can use to make a post about it on your own blog

Earth in your hands – make a video showing that we all hold the earth’s future in our hands.

Get the Earth Hour Facebook application – it’ll put your profile picture into candle-light or night-vision for the hour.

Get inspired with what other people are doing by checking out Earth Hour’s sections on YouTube, Flickr and 12seconds. If you’re keen, take a photo or video of yourself during the blackout and post it to these groups. If you haven’t got a YouTube or Flickr account, or don’t need one of your own, but have something to post, let me know and I can put them up for you.

I’m in G Magazine this month

Just a quick note to mention that I’m blogging for G Magazine again, doing the G Challenge each month. This month’s quest is to take public transport or a bike more often, you can read about it at the G Challenge blog.

I’m also in the latest (March/April) print issue. I was competing with a guy named Nathan to see which of us could save more money by going green, and we both wrote our stories of how it worked out for us. Check it out at your newsagent or supermarket (or ask your library to get a subscription).

One room

Just wanted to share this adorable little video with you. It’s an old public service announcement from the 80s, featuring Kermit the Frog and other muppets.

Fresh green links

Interesting links from this week:

Catalyst’s Water recycling segment – an 11 minute video about Queensland’s water recycling plant. It shows you how the water is treated, which I’d never seen before, and has comments from people for and against it. There’s a transcript of the segment also. Personally, I’d be happy to drink recycled water instead of draining the ground water aquifers we use here in Perth.

Why to Deny on Climate Change – 12 reasons why some people deny the reality of climate change (via Mother Nature Network)

Hundreds attend global warming protest – a lot of effort went into this cute protest, it’s well worth a look at the photo I think Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes would like this.