On Guerrilla Gardening

12/06/2025

Scotland's biggest roundabout (2 green acres of potential), is becoming a food forest. Read more about the Mounthooly Food Forest:

A community group is using one of the city's busiest roundabouts in a rather unexpected way...

05/12/2024

Brilliant tale from Arran of guerrilla gardeners Margo McLellan and Henry Murdo helping rejuvenate the population of native White Beam trees. They have recently revealed that for many years they have in secret, and without permission, been growing new trees from seed and planting saplings across the Scottish island.

A COUPLE with a passion for conservation has helped save a native rare tree on the Isle of Arran from extinction through “guerilla gardening” ...

18/10/2023

‘Right to grow’ momentum is growing. Hull council now getting on board. Focus is on edibles - actually usually a tougher challenge than ornamentals for using and managing neglected public land. So this is a very encouraging shift in perception and practice for how we use precious land. Great campaigning from Incredible Edibles.

City councillors pass motion to let community groups, charities and neighbours cultivate fruit and veg

11/10/2023

Tips on the use of seed bomb from me (Richard Reynolds) and Tracey Besemer of https://www.facebook.com/ruralsprout/ reported in today's Washington Post. A technique for the most cautious or for hard to reach locations, a bit hit and miss but there's a long tradition of it being a 'force for good'. https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2023/10/11/how-to-make-seed-bombs/

05/10/2023

In case you missed TWO recent widely reported acts of guerrilla gardening at Hadrian's Wall... one was horrendously destructively, one symbolically hopeful. Both crimes, both failures for nature, but perhaps, as author Robert Macfarlane has championed, a new forest will be planted in memorial.

Kieran Chapman, 27, says removal of young sycamore he planted at site of historic felled tree is ‘devastating’

04/10/2023

Reassuring advice for guerrilla gardeners from a UK lecturer in law writing in The Conversation:

Many people are gardening on land that is not theirs – here are some things to consider to avoid getting into trouble.

29/09/2023

This weekend the Green Guerillas celebrate their 50th anniversary! The group came together led by Liz Christy (painter), Amos Taylor (horticulturalist) and Marty Gallent (NYC City Planner) They first coined the term 'guerilla gardening' and have been on a constant evolutionary journey from illicit urban gardening, creating new gardens, to insecure permission, campaigning against their sell off in the '90s, to growing legitimisation this century. Today the Green Guerillas help nurture existing gardens, supporting the transition between generations of older gardeners to younger ones.

There's a public party this Saturday at La Plaza Cultural community garden in New York (see invite), created in 1976 and one of the many in New York thriving today because of the Green Guerillas. They are wonderful spaces, I first visited to see the places and people in 2006 and am sorry to not be able to join the party tomorrow, instead sending a young local green fingered relative instead who is just discovering the wonders of gardening in a community.

Listen to the story of the Green Guerillas discussed recently on WNYC radio https://www.wnyc.org/story/green-guerillas-marks-50-years-fighting-green-spaces/

27/09/2023

Encouraging coverage today of an official government adviser advocating more encouragement / tolerance for people planting in public places. Could guerrilla gardening be on the brink of more legitimacy? Nicholas Boys Smith of https://www.facebook.com/createstreets on BBC Radio 4 Today 2hrs 42mins in:

News and current affairs, including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.

07/07/2023

Tucked away in an alley near Cairns Street is a created by Elizabeth and Paul over the last five years, entirely from containers, not just pots, but basins, toys and anything that will hold soil. I got to meet them and see the space earlier this summer when holidaying in Liverpool. The work began by clearing out some fly tipping and has gradually spread along the space with the encouragement of neighbours. When a plant outgrows its pot it is sometimes sold at the neighbourhood market. I noted they've a handy tip for watering: fill bottles of water and leave them full ready and waiting along the length of the alley ready to be used when water is needed.

05/07/2023

In May I returned to Cairns Street and was reunited with resident Eleanor Lee and local Tracey Dunn who I had met in 2011. I've written about the inspirational visits at www.GuerrillaGardening.org and have uploaded several photos of the visit here. (More to follow about Paul and Elizabeth's Alley Garden).

27/06/2023

Metro (London's free morning newspaper) shares the tale of Matthew Bradby a guerrilla gardener beautifying swathes of Tottenham since 2008.

'The biggest risk for guerrilla gardening isn't so much the vandals - it's the local authorities and landscape contractors because they just come and mow things over.'

18/06/2023

For that bit of land between road and pavement that has many different names - hell strip, berm, swale, easement, verge, nature strip etc - here's a beautiful example from Jennie Ostertag in Texas: https://dengarden.com/news/hellstrip-gardening