Story by: Danielle Sylos
Concrete roads, tall buildings, and limited green space surround everyday city dwellers. Many urbanites are environmentalists who ride metro lines, bike to work, drive hybrid cars, and do their best to live a green lifestyle. Another way for urbanites to incorporate a green lifestyle into their lives is by surrounding themselves with nature. To help them accomplish a life filled with nature, there is a gardening movement happening all over the country and the world called Guerrilla Gardening, which brings gardening to urban centers in innovated ways.
Guerrilla gardening is a non-violent direct movement. It is related to land rights, land reform, and permaculture. Activists use abandoned land, which they do not own to grow plants or crops. Guerrilla gardeners believe in reconsidering land ownership in order to reclaim land from perceived neglect or misuse, and assign a new purpose to it. Some guerrilla gardeners work in secrecy at night while others work more openly. In other words, if you live somewhere where space is limited and you don’t have an area of your own to plant a garden or know others who don’t, it doesn’t matter because there is a spot somewhere that needs greenery in your community.
This idea of guerrilla gardening certainly isn’t a new phenomenon, it actually goes all the way back to 1973 on a lot in New York City. It is the brainchild of Liz Christy and other gardening activists called Green Guerrillas, all of whom transformed an abandoned lot, in Manhattan on Bowery and Houston Street, into a historical garden. Liz Christy and the Green Guerrillas saw potential in a forgotten place in their neighbor and developed an abundant garden of sixty raised plant beds that they planted with veggies, trees, and herbaceous borders. The movement immediately caught the attention of nearby neighborhoods, which all saw what could be done and the potential within their own neighborhoods. Consequently, the Green Guerrillas started teaching workshops and planting experiments for those interested in starting their very own gardens.