September 18, 2007
Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto
Maya Khankhoje in Rabble Book Reviews:
Guerrilla gardening can be summarily defined as gardening in public urban spaces with or without permission. Gardening by the citizens, that is, by urban guerrillas intent, not on destroying the status quo as such but on restoring the web of life that the status quo has been destroying so wantonly. Why do these citizens feel such a sense of urgency? Consider the following:
The earth is cultivated more than ever before…swamps are drying up and cities are springing up at an unprecedented scale. We have become a burden to our planet. Resources are becoming scarce and soon nature will no longer be able to satisfy our needs.
This pressing concern was voiced by Quintus Septimus Tertullian more than 2,200 years ago. This is the very same concern that has spurred urban guerrillas of a gentler, albeit no less radical bend of mind than armed guerrillas, to engage in urban gardening tactics, risking fines and imprisonment. These include fly-by-night plantings in urban wastelands, lobbing “seed grenades” into fenced-off empty lots, planting trees in the middle of nowhere, covering traffic circles with native ground cover, sowing edible plants in school-yards, draping lamp posts with decorative creepers, developing community gardens and empowering disaffected youth by reintroducing them to the joys of dirtying one’s hands in the soil. The list is as boundless as any warrior’s imagination.
More here.
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Comments
My dog provides a generous degree of guerilla fertilization to local flowerbeds.
Posted by: aguy109 | Sep 19, 2007 9:26:19 AM
Whilst David Tracey and this reviewer choose to define guerrilla gardening "as gardening in public urban spaces with or without permission" this is in fact nonsense! Guerrilla gardening is about the initiative, courage and fight to cultivate land WITHOUT permission, as a wonderful and effective strategy for improving the landscape. Permission may later be granted, and that should be celebrated as a peaceful conclusion of war, not labeled as guerrilla activity as if it were some trendy tag. Tracey's book is a cynical exploitation of guerrilla gardening, a rambling jumble of tired and depressing eco-rants, disconnected quotations and manipulation. Guerrilla gardening needs to be championed, but not by someone who admits his book was knocked off in a busy month and by someone who was a very reluctant convert to guerrilla gardening. I am in fighting spirit.
Posted by: Richard | Sep 20, 2007 7:36:00 AM
Hey Richard!
Great to hear from you again.
You've been keeping busy, I see, with the posts wherever my book gets mentioned. Always ending with the helpful link to your extensive site (which I plugged in the book), with its long list of media hits on all things guerrilla gardening all over the world -- oh, except for any mention of my book.
It's a pity you didn't like it. Or the definition. One of the reasons I added the "with or without permission," as you would have read from one of the interviews you've been flagging, was to highlight the autonomous and inclusive nature of the art. I don't believe anyone planting for the public good who happily discovers that the land owner/manager supports the whole idea should be told they can no longer be in the club. Not the kind of club I'd be keen to hang out in, anyway.
But maybe we have different concepts of what guerrilla gardening is all about? I'm all for promoting something that's postive, nurturing, engaging and planet-friendly. Something we can all get involved in. There's a great tradition of sharing the work and the harvest that gardeners everywhere seem to have almost by instinct. I think that's why every one of the dozens of people I contacted in writing the book were pleased to help -- that is, every one but you. It turns out you were the only one to blow me off.
I didn't mind much at the time -- I understood you were writing a book of your own, and figured, great, let a hundred flowers bloom. I must admit it did confuse me a bit later when I saw you slagging the book on line for reasons that might be taken as not entirely objective.
But now, with the above post where you misrepresent me and my work, I'm concerned for your blood pressure. Really, Richard, if you must work yourself up into a fighting mood, shouldn't you at least try to fight fair? I've spent more than 20 years in environmental activism, I'm a licensed professional arborist heading a citizen's volunteer tree planting organization, I have a three-year professional degree at the graduate school level in landscape architecture, I'm coordinating a city-wide project to increase community gardens among the poor and I've helped hundreds of people learn about urban agriculture and engaged ecology. All of this went into the book which you'd like people to think is a cynical knock-off.
Finally, I'm not sure guerrilla gardening needs a "champion," but if you're auditioning for the part, maybe you should lighten up a tad? C'mon, Richard, step into the sunshine. We're growing stuff here! It's actually a lot of fun, at least more fun than trying to trash the few gardens that do get started.
Good luck and keep growing...
Posted by: David | Sep 20, 2007 8:50:18 PM
David
Whilst I commend anyone who encourages people to take an active interest in the landscape around them, beyond their doorstep and beyond their garden gate, I am also aware that to get people interested and involved requires not just fun and inspirational stories but also clarity, accuracy and honesty.
Guerrilla gardening is a thoroughly inclusive movement but to suggest that anyone who gardens in public space is a guerrilla is just plain silly. Surely those who garden with permission in public should celebrate their recognition and support? Legitimisation is the end point for a guerrilla, a triumphant victory, like the success story of guerrillas in New York. That’s not to say gardening in peacetime is all blissful roses and butterflies, but it is decidedly different. Whilst I hope we all take a degree of ownership in this planet, a gardener who tends soil that they do not officially have permission to (or even own) is symbolically and practically very different to doing the same within boundaries. Guerrilla gardening is sometimes a better strategy for securing this victory than following official procedures; it can even change official policy as in Vancouver. Guerrilla gardening is sometimes not a choice but a necessity where permission is not an option. By encouraging anyone who gardens in public to call themselves a guerrilla you become a war mongering gardening hawk! I want guerrillas to celebrate peace and recognise victory.
By confusing the definition you are doing guerrilla gardening a disservice, you are undermining what makes those who garden without permission a little bit different, their bravery, their risks, and the delight of seeing a plant flourish against the odds. By drawing on the experience of people who have not actually been guerrilla gardening you present a manual that is peppered with bad advice. You may be an experienced gardener but you have not drawn on the experience of many guerrilla gardeners and the context and conditions for gardening in this way is different. I have had enquiries from your disappointed readers who are confused by their gardening failures based on your words.
You compare guerrilla gardening to a club and suggest I want to exclude people from it. This is wrong. Anyone can guerrilla garden, it’s just about getting out there and gardening land with no questions asked. There are infinite possibilities. Comparing guerrilla gardening to a club is symptomatic of your use of the guerrilla word. To you it seems to be a fun, trendy tag, rather than as something with more substance. You trivialise the guerrilla word like authors of “guerrilla tele-selling” and “guerrilla golf.” You may chuckle, but a lot of us see guerrilla gardening as something a little bit more serious.
I did not “blow you out” for an interview. When you enquired last summer I responded cautiously because I am inundated with enquiries, many of which are about using guerrilla gardening to sell stuff rather than just selling the idea. I explained my situation to you, described my nascent book as a “manual and manifesto”, you reassured me and we agreed to talk - but then you never got in touch! It was a pity because I wish we could have had this discussion before you went to print, even if we agreed to differ, the debate could perhaps have been reflected there rather than here. Your specific references to my guerrilla gardening activity in your Manuelfesto are inaccurate and have a nasty sarcastic taint. You suggest I have “taken up the flag” from the anarchistic and short-termist gardening of Reclaim The Streets, something which you mock in your book. This is wrong. You go on to imply that as a “resourceful advertising industry chap” website I merely collect other people’s planting projects rather than actually participate. This is wrong. At least you had the grace to leave me nameless.
Despite our lack of conversation I share my guerrilla gardening experiences, and those of many others, online at GuerrillaGardening.org. You yourself have drawn from it extensively, without attribution, for your book.
Guerrilla Gardening A Manuelfesto is a rag-bag of anecdotes, some of it is about guerrilla gardening, most of it is about community gardening. Your book is a celebration of gardening in public space, (all be it distracted by some random eco rants), you interviewed some wonderful people and gave them a voice, but by tagging it all as guerrilla gardening it seems you have pointlessly faked your ID to be in what you see as a trendy club.
Two years ago I was made redundant from an advertising agency where I worked on sexual health advertising and a well known online auction website, and since then have been putting most of my time into guerrilla gardening instead. I draw on my experience from my time in advertising as well as from being a keen amateur gardener to build the movement and protect it from exploitation.
David, my background in advertising has trained me to spot when someone cynically repackages an old product in a shiny new box. You have repackaged your extensive gardening and community experience under the guerrilla gardening label. You are not the first; there are other misleadingly titled guerrilla gardening books out there too, and other even more commercially minded people trying to take from the movement whilst describing it as giving. I will continue to do my best to rectify that and yes IT MAKES MY BLOOD BOIL. To stop myself keeling over from a heart attack I channel this anger back into getting my hands dirty guerrilla gardening. Working up a sweat surrounded by soothing plants usually calms me down. And with that in mind, I’ll head out now with my shears and give my mallow a good heavy pruning.
Posted by: Richard | Sep 21, 2007 6:07:30 AM
Richard, what makes you so angry? Your anger will have people thinking twice about gardening.Gardening lessens stress. Like music, it soothes the savage breast. Please, lighten up. For your own sake.
Posted by: Dorothy | Sep 21, 2007 8:22:22 PM
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