Project 3: Environmental Activism: Guerrilla Gardening

Introduction
…[S]ome people have a different definition of gardening. I am one of them. I do not wait for permission to become a gardener but dig wherever I see horticultural potential. I do not just tend existing gardens but create them from neglected space. I, and thousands of people like me, step out from home to garden land we do not own. We see opportunities all around us. Vacant lots flourish as urban oases, roadside verges dazzle with flowers and crops are harvested from land that was assumed to be fruitless. In all their forms these have become known as guerrilla gardens. The attacks are happening all around us and on every scale—from surreptitious solo missions to spectacular horticultural campaigns by organized and politically charged cells. This is guerrilla gardening:
THE ILLICIT CULTIVATION
OF SOMEONE ELSE’S LAND.
The battle is gathering pace. Most people own no land. Most of us live in cities and have no garden of our own. We demand more from this planet than it has the space and resources to offer. Guerrilla gardening is a battle for resources, a battle against scarcity of land, environmental abuse and wasted opportunities. It is also a fight for freedom of expression and for community cohesion. It is a battle in which bullets are replaced with flowers (most of the time). (14, 16)
Method
The preceding quote from Richard Reynolds’ On Guerrilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening without Boundaries, provides us with both a literal and an ideological definition of the agrarian phenomenon known as guerrilla gardening. For our last project, we will experiment with guerrilla gardening in our places—on or off campus. This project will be half background and half refined field-notes. You will research and write a background report on guerrilla gardening, informing yourself about the history, manifestations, and motivations of this movement (approximately 650 words). An excellent place to start is Richard Reynolds website, www.guerrillagardening.org. This background section will act as an introduction into a write-up of your own guerrilla gardening experience, wherein you identify and take responsibility for a small piece of earth. Combined, the two sections should be a minimum of 1900 words. You will need to provide visual documentation of your experiment as well—the before, during, and after photos that will enhance our reading of your involvement with the dirt, the weeds, the sun, the rain, and the seeds!
For your experiment, you’ll need to write about WHERE you garden:
o WHAT is there (or not there)?
o WHAT is the general condition of this space?
o WHY did you choose this spot?
o WHAT did you do? Did you germinate seeds? Did you plant seedlings? Did you pioneer a garden from scratch, or did you enhance an existing garden plot? Did you choose flowers, herbs, vegetables? Why?
o What rationale appeals to you the most and why? Beautification? Food and greater self-sufficiency? Creating community? Gardening for health (physical activity)? Could there be a business angle? Did you garden for expressive reasons (to leave a “mark”, a message, a memorial)?

Possible Organizational Strategy
Compose the first section, the background, like our other essays: grab the reader’s attention and introduce the topic of guerrilla gardening. Provide the reader with an understanding of this movement—its history, its mission and the various reasons why people choose to become guerrilla gardeners, and highlight a few important examples (such as the founding movement in New York in the early 70s, and perhaps the current movement in England that is inspired and documented by Richard Reynolds).
For the second section, you might consider documenting your own experience in a journal format. Keep a daily (b)log of your activities, beginning with your identification of a potential gardening space, and make daily entries that detail your continued activities. Take a picture or two everyday to accompany your postings in order to show the before, during and after phases of your experiment.

Requirements
The completed essay and photos must be submitted by Wednesday, April 28th.
Length: 1900 Words
Format: MLA-style documentation

A Mini-Manifesto for Engaged Ecology (E²)

1. We have the right to fresh air, clear water and healthy soil.
2. A government that cannot provide them loses legitimacy.
3. The earth is in a crisis.
4. Cities are not the problem, they’re the solution.
5. Cities are alive and should be treated that way.
6. Biodiversity is the best measure of a healthy place.
7. Humans have evolved to live in harmony with nature.
8. The public creates the best public spaces
9. People will care for a place they plant themselves.
10. Engaged ecology creates a community. (Tracey 20)

Works Cited

Reynolds, Richard. On Guerrilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening without Boundaries. New York: Bloomsbury, 2008.

Tracey, David. Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto. New Society: Gabriola Island, BC Canada, 2007.