Guerilla Gardeners: Resistance is Fertile
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 06.10.07
We have heard murmurs of guerilla gardening in London and other places; now this scourge has hit Toronto. Often under cover of night, they skulk around town, vandalizing public space with flowers. Working covertly they descend on neglected planters, traffic medians and forlorn strips of dirt and attack them with trowels, spoons and their bare hands, performing random acts of planting, often around billboards and bus shelters. "Its a subtle way of protesting public space being privatized and of demanding advertisers remove their mark from space that was meant for the people" Co-ordinator Lindsay Kelly told the National Post."Its a quieter way to make a statement".
According to Eye, They attacked a plot in the club district. People would ask what they were doing. "People are inspired by the fact that you're doing it not because you're being paid or because it's where you live, but by the fact that you're doing things intrinsically," [activist Carly] Stasko says. "It's organic culture-jamming."
Eye continues: The guerrilla gardeners are an assortment of artists, computer programmers, grandmothers and high school students. All of them believe surreptitious planting is a fun way to reclaim physical space in the city. "People have an inherent reluctance to test the limits of public space," says [Guerilla Henry] Martinuk, who hates that people are intimidated by space that is, essentially, theirs.
And while there is an absurd element to gardening in secret locations by the light of a battery-powered bicycle light, the act of planting is as important as the plants themselves.
"We're conditioned to think we have to spend money to hang out with each other," says Sastko. "Instead of consuming, you're producing something."
We learn from Spacing that at a particularly benighted interesection next to the tracks at Toronto's Dufferin and Queen, the Guerilla Gardeners attacked with flowers and photographer David Risk planted a photography exhibition from his collection, on display until "they succumb to either the elements or "the human problem." ::Guerilla Gardeners
I love the idea of returning native plants to an area. We need more wildspace for a healthier world. It's a little more work to find out what plants are native to your area, but it''s worth the effort to do so, to increase the healthy biodiversity of your community.
I've also suggested to my local officials that they could alleviate the problem of not having enough community gardens to offer to all the folks who want to garden in my city, while saving money on hiring contractors to do landscaping, by offering up public parks and other public land spaces to gardeners for free. The city could buy the plants or let people choose their own plants, as long as they weren't invasive non-native plants.
I THINK THIS IS AMAZING>>>> makes me tempted to get a group together my self!!
I love this idea. It is beautiful and rebellious all at the same time. I love the groups art attacks too.
Thanks for the mention. Tried to comment before but I didn't make it through. It was fun to see the guerrilla planting appear about a month or so after I first installed my 'solo show' behind the fence at Queen & Dufferin streets.
The land behind the fence is city-owned but is also home to a double-facing billboard which played some role in how I displayed my 36 small photos. The fenced in area is interesting because it's the sort of public space that gets almost entirely ignored. Behind the fence and up a small slope is a large triangle of fairly naturalized grassland. Within the next year or so Dufferin street will be connected north to south by a new underpass beneath the railyard changing this corner quite radically.
Most of my photos are about the subtle public things that get overlooked. The traces that people leave behind and our human effect on each other.
I'm not connected to the Parkdale Guerrilla gardeners but I was happy that my art played neighbour to their planting as my partner is Gayla Trail of yougrowgirl.com and gardening and ecology are an everyday part of our life.
I think it's a great way to expand and give back to the hundreds of lost trees and plants that human beings had cost mother nature.
u ppl are freeking heros. this is fantastic and i think i may just take this up. resistance is fertile is the funniest title i have ever heard, but its really cool.
Plant on
u ppl are freeking heros. this is fantastic and i think i may just take this up. resistance is fertile is the funniest title i have ever heard, but its really cool.
Plant on