BlogTipsEnlistCommunityLinks
Make a donationTroop DigsGetting StartedE-mail
 
 
In Tbilisi
Location: Freedom Square, Tbilisi, Georgia Guerrilla Gardening: Wednesday 21 July 2010
I’ve been in Tbilisi contributing to Frozen MomentsGG
an art exhibition within the ruined Ministry of Transportation, a 1970s building built on a cliff face and designed to be covered in creepers, but one which nature has nearly taken over. My ten “Quadrants in Tundra 145” marked talking points of confrontation between nature, the building and  Ana plants a rose
humans. But beyond the Ministry was guerrilla gardening to discover and to do - as I’ve done before while abroad, a small horticultural intervention in a grotty public Tripoli
View hereAfter eyeing up numerous possible tree pits, I settled on one at the edge of Freedom Square.
Showing 'Quandrants in Tundra 145' around the reuined Ministry of TransportationA local guerrilla garden cultivated near the mashutka garage and frozen cable car station
GuerrillaGardening.org
Planting out pansiesPansies Move. The Pansy Project garden (see blog entry below) being dismantled to be replanted in guerrilla gardens
Location: From Elephant & Castle to Lambeth North Guerrilla Gardening: 12 and 13 July 2010 Big flower shows are like big flower arrangements, which means afterwards a lot gets thrown away. But efforts are increasingly made by the exhibitors to  find new homes for the plants, and an obvious place for Paul and Tom’s award winning pansies was to  guerrilla gardens. So on Monday morning I returned  to Hampton Court and squeezed seven old banana  boxes full of pansies into my BGT. At this time of  the year in the UK planting out new bedding is a  commitment to watering because it’s late and dry, but it’s also a time when there are a few blank patches in  the herbaceous borders to fill. So that evening we went out and filled gaps around Perronet House, and the next evening, with a pair of Italian journalists  along to help, I stuffed more into the tree pits of  St George’s Road, bumping into a local resident with her watering can at the same time, who, unknown to me, had recently adopted one of our tree-pits of sunflowers! It’s the first to flower.London Road pansies, Elephant & Castle. Guerrilla sunflower, sown on International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day 2010. In bloom 17 July, St George's Road
GuerrillaGardening.org
Celebrating Gardening Against The OddsCompetition: Closing date 17 September ‘10 “Gardening Against The Odds” is being  rewarded in a new UK competition that celebrates the spirit of the late Elspeth  Thompson, a gardener and writer who  championed guerrilla gardening.  Obstacles may include the following: 1. Creating a garden in an unlikely, or  inhospitable corner, e.g. a derelict site  or built-up area 2. Gardening in the face of physical health problems 3. Gardening in the face of mental  or psychological health problems such  as depression or grief. Elspeth suffered  depression and in March she took her own life.
Click here to read more and enter
I am particularly proud to be one of the judges of this competition, partly because Elspeth was very encouraging of what we do, the first writer to report on what I was up to. And also because the affliction of
mental illness is something I have seen eased by gardens and gardening - the beauty and  satisfaction is mentally nourishing. The turning point in my mother’s battle with bipolar disorder was on a family visit to Bodnant Gardens in North Wales. Aged 13 I vividly  remember that afternoon ended four bleak years, and when she returned home we slowly  started tackling our neglected overgrown garden around Holsworthy Rectory together.
GuerrillaGardening.org
Paul and Tom Harfleet during the construction of their flower show garden. 5 July - 11 July 2010 Paul Harfleet and his brother Tom have won a goldRHS Gold Medal for a guerrilla gardener
Location: RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower ShowPaul's guerrilla gardening in Manchester marks
Society's Hampton Court showplaces of abuse
Paul's a guerrilla who plants pansies as hopeful memorials where there's a homo-phobic attack
Pauls conceptual garden at the show may not mark
a known act of homophobic abuse in the royal park but it is beautifully thought provoking. I was glad to help them and their mum Barbara out on the day their 3000 pansies were delivered and we planted them into crevices of the giant shattered pavement they had created. Two years before I built a show 3000 pansies for the garden
feature from recycled plants and, feeling rather
bereft of a prize I awarded our garden aa gold gilt
(we were not eligible for the formal awards). But this time Paul has achieved the top prize without resort to mischief. The garden has won gold and best in  category! It just shows you what a bit of guerrilla
gardening can lead to and the Pansy's Project will reach thousands.Barabara me and Tom begin planting
GuerrillaGardening.org
Tree PitSuperhighway
Location: St George's Road and Princess St, London SE1 Guerrilla gardening: 12, 15 and 16 June 2010. London is being painted blue by our Mayor
In my local area the cycle superhighway is having a few side-effects, good and bad. First a young ornamental pear tree was felled to the stump (by which, with funny coincidence I had snapped  the mayor cycling past last year). But the up shot of the reconfiguration of some pavements has been the Our guerrilla sweet peas and viola in a tree pit on Princess Street, SE1
Mayor Johnson before the tree's choppingPetunias tolerate the dry soil for one summer
opportunity to plant them before the tree pits get filled with Transport for London standard mix of vegetation-deterring rubble and sand. So with sacks of delicious fresh top soil and compost Lyla and I set out at in the late evening to fill them up. The timing was perfect for bumping into the landlord  of the local Thai bar, who was delighted by our improvements and keen to support me requesting
Trees for Cities replanttheir felled tree near his bar.
A few petunias, oregano lavender and pelargoniums was our simple and fairly instant planting scheme in what is quite light shade. Encouraged by this we returned later in the week to the next tree pit along, but this time as another sack of new soil was pouring into the bleak concrete hollow we were approached by a local who introduced herself as a recently bereaved gardener, bereaved that is of her balcony garden that had been briskly removed by her landlord after fire regulations were tightened up last year. Like us she had considered the potential in the tree pit and was now excited to make claim to cultivate it with us. Planting and watering in the new guerrilla garden on St George's Road, SE1
garden that had been briskly removed by her landlord after fire regulations were tightened up last year. Like us she had considered the potential in the tree pit and was now excited to make claim to cultivate it with us. With some embarrassment for having perhaps stepped on her territory I was soon gladly handing over responsibility and we decided to leave the soil bare for her to finish off to her own design. But this golden tale of community cheer was not over yet. As we packed up I was startled by a man’s voice saying, “Hello, Mr Reynolds, I’ve caught you red handed”.
A couple of weeks after planting the tree pit is in bloom and we've mulched the top soil with bark chippings to help retain the moistureAnd then I saw it was my local councillor, a rare friendly face within an organisation of notorious ineptitudee.g. 2e.g. 3
Guerrilla gardening tree pitIt wasn’t his place to give permission but he certainly wasn’t keen to discourage us. Two days later as I cycled home from work I saw Beverly 14047 can struck with a peppering of marigolds and lavender. And not long after we bumped into each other again, each with a watering can in hand, our triggers at the ready to give the new patches a good drench. The workmen have now gone and the guerrilla tree pits are thriving in their wake.
GuerrillaGardening.org
Guerilla Garden Guided Walk Start: Elephant & Castle North Roundabout Rendezvous: Sunday 20 June 2010 at 3pm I’m leading a ninety minute guided tour of numerous guerrilla gardens around my local area, from round about to tree pit. Each one tells a story. The event isGuerilla gardens of SE1
one of the The Guardian's top ten picks ofthe LondonLondon Festival of Architecture 2010
Festival of Architecture, for more infoclick here.
GuerrillaGardening.org
Veg plotLyla 1046 preparing the ground
Location: Westminster Bridge Road, London, SE1 Guerrilla gardening: Saturday5 June 2010 Tomatos, cabbages, beetroots, lettuces, runner beans and a couple of raspberry canes are thriving on this corner of a traffic island on the Southwark Lambeth borders while across the rest of the plot our crop of  English lavender makes a bold advance to full bloomMarch 2006 before guerrillas struck
My first decent crop of guerrilla strawberries harvested from a traffic island near BlackfriarsGuerrilla strawberries, planted in 2008 and now thriving in London SE1
GuerrillaGardening.org
Our sunflower triangle in Stockholm's PlattanStockholm Sunflowers
Location: Plattan & Vitabergsparken Stockholm, Sweden Guerrilla gardening visit: 28 - 29 May 2010 KulturhusetGuerillaGardening.org Visit
and now, in a small way I could return the favour, by helping open a new exhibition on urban gardening and join in their little horticultural provocation, theTemporary guerrilla sunflowers
creation of a temporary golden triangle of sunflowers in the capital’s Plattan which were distributed to passers by afterwards (a short video of its formation can be viewedhere). The British Council (a thankfully supportive council) also got together a group of local enthusiasts for an afternoon’s instruction, inspiration and discussion about guerrilla gardening. I got the chance to see some of
the local guerrilla planting of fruit treesTillvaxt.orghear about their successes and challenge
challenges - similar to mine, where the difference is down to the enthusiasm or at least tolerance of a few significant people, whether they are official or not. I was also told Sweden has a weak culture of volunteering, partly due to the high expectations of the state. There was a tedious uniformity to the municipal flowerbeds, from city centre to suburban housing estate, it was all a few mixed shades of blue and purple pansies with forget-me
nots. We also spotted a patch of guerrilla grown hollyhocks with the determined notice that “50 hollyhocks will bloom here this summer!”
Guerrilla hollyhocks planted in a bed cut into and fenced off on a verge on MalmgardsvagenGuerrilla blackcurrant planted by the Tillvaxt group in Vitabergsparken
GuerrillaGardening.org

For blogs earlier in the year clickFor blogs earlier in the year click here