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?
5 Comments
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Yea, we watched for about 5 minutes. Groan.
It’s a bit sad, because it’s a great topic. They didn’t really do it justice, I reckon.
I don’t have a TV, but I read about it. I would prefer to see a documentary series where they go to different areas and film genuine GGs and follow them up.
I’m not aware of it happening here (Elwood is a lovely leafy suburb), but I have seen people take ownership of their nature strip and plant more drought tolerant plants than the default grass.
See, that’s a really good idea, switching to something that needs less water. We don’t have a nature strip ourselves but if we did I’d love to get some of those native grasses on there instead of the usual couch.
I saw the show ones and really like the idea. I also understand that you can’t just spice up everything that you want because you also have to think about other people.