Amanda McCoy
Communicator

Dating back as far as Johnny Appleseed and possibly even further, the art guerrilla gardening never died. It just became illegal.

Guerrilla gardening is gardening without the property owners’ permission.  Either done in secret to avoid confrontation or in broad daylight, these gardeners take it upon themselves to plant in areas they haven’t aquired the right to plant on.

Guerrilla gardening has sprung up in Spokane as well. In an arrticle on guerrilla gardening, the Metro Spokane website reported that a bush had been planted in the downtown area. Even though the bush isn’t likely to survive, it is a start.

According to The Seattle Times Magazine, over the last decade there has been an increase from 30 community gardens to 70, many of which started as guerrilla gardens.  Not only is it a source of food, but the gardening has been used as a tool for social change.

What used to be a guerrilla garden in a right-of-way on Capitol Hill is now the Pelican Tea Garden where neighbors cultivate vegetables and fruit trees, said Valerie Easton in her article “On Common Ground”.

“Fight the filth with forks and flowers,” says Richard Reynolds, the author of “On Guerrilla Gardening; A handbook for gardening without boundaries.”

Reynolds gave some insight on motives of guerrilla gardeners and how to get things started. He explained that there is no fixed ideology of guerrilla gardeners and there is no age group defining the people involved in the activity.  People have motives ranging from activists making a political statement, to impoverished communities working on land that isn’t theirs to harvest food.

Reynolds started gardening outside of his flat in London, and over the years has acquired gardening rights in several places.  When he started he would garden in the early hours of the morning, but as he became more comfortable with the idea he started gardening during evening hours. He sometimes used “seedbombs,” which are bundled seeds that can be thown into unaccessible areas, to plant in places he wasn’t able to get to.

“Don’t think of it as a group thing to start with, even though that is a great thing, many of the groups that I know started off on their own,” said Reynolds. 

Reynolds claims that he did run into some trouble over the years and at one point the police wanted to arrest him for criminal damage, a similar charge to malicious mischief.  He said that when someone finds themselves in a situation like that the best thing they can do besides have plants or flowers on them is to just explain what they are doing and be honest about it.

“Think of it as a long term project,” said Reynolds. “You arent going to accomplish this overnight that is part of the fun. It is a gradual conservation.”