“Gardening is the art that uses flowers and plants as paint, and the soil and sky as a canvas.”
- Elizabeth Murray
Guerrilla gardening can be a radical act. It can be as simple as the desire to spruce up the neighborhood, to spread seeds of edible plants knowing one day they may sustain a hungry soul. It requires patience and follow through: patience, in that it doesn’t happen overnight, it may take weeks or months to see results, and follow through, in that an individual must be able to go back and check on their handy work and to harvest anything or replant. It can be a radical act for those who may be extreme environmentalists wishing to return just a small part of urban decay back to the state of nature in which it belongs, or even a active protest, like planting flowers on the front lawns of enforcers or cannabis on public lands. And above all, guerrilla gardening can be really fun!
I’m going to tell you mainly about stealth gardening in an urban landscape. A city is the prime ground to do this, not only because it is something impactful you could do as an individual in a sea full of people, most of which are too busy commuting, paying bills, and just being in the rush of the rat race to notice a vegetable patch here, an herb garden there. In many urban decayed areas, cops aren’t going to bust you for deploying a bag of bulbs into an abandoned building because: 1) they are lazy, 2) they don’t care (unless you are looking suspicious, or if you are a minority or downtrodden, then watch out!), and 3) they are too busy responding to frivolous drug enforcement actions, DUIs, and assaulting the poor people. Nevertheless, future stealth gardener, you still need to keep your guard up and be aware of your surroundings.
First, you’ll need to pick a few spots where you’d like to sew some seeds. For me, personally, I’m partial to walking down sketchy streets near abandoned steel, coal, and manufacturing buildings. The urban decay is really beautiful to me for one, and two, you’re more likely to really have a sustainable crop in an area where no one has gone for years. Obviously you still need plenty of sun and the soil conditions don’t have to be perfect. Chances are if you see other indigenous plants springing up there, it’s going to probably a pretty ideal spot. I would scout out the area and do some recon first before your first plant. Is there a lot of traffic nearby or a lot of people coming and going? Follow the following acronym, LLS:
L-ook
L-isten
S-ee
If so, do those people really care if you are dropping things in the dirt behind a building? If you are walking among abandoned buildings, you may need to look out for private security or patrol cars. If you are near strip clubs, bars (e.g. “red light” district) no one is going to be looking to find out what you are doing, they came in from the burbs to get drunk and or score so you might as well be a ghost. Another important thing is what time of day you plan on spreading your seeds. I’d recommend taking a walk after dark, however, in some cases that may arouse even more suspicion. Try to go when most 9-5’rs come and go, that way you can hide in plane sight. And be prepared to make up a bullshit story about why you are where you are:
“Oh, I was just taking a walk.”
“Oh, I got lost on the way to the bar. Did you see that big game? I’m so pissed xyz lost!”
“I live down in XYZ area and just getting some fresh air.”
It also matters where you are in the world. If you’re in colonialist UK, the most surveilled countries in the world, or some cities in the USSA such as New York, LA, or Chicago, where there are likely more CCTV cameras than people, you’re more likely to be picked up on a trespassing charge than for anything you have in your pockets. But please don’t let that scare or discourage you, because in the end, if you’re careful, what are they going to arrest you for? Existing? Unauthorized possession of seeds known to cause nourishment?
Once you’ve found a few spots with decent soil, inconspicuous areas, decent sun, you’ll need to decide what you are going to plant and how to go about sewing. First off, if you have seeds from an indoor garden or ones that you’ve purchased (like from www.agoristacres.com), just make sure they are native to your region and when you should go about talking your “walks” so that your plants have a better chance of thriving. And it depends on what your end goal is: you may want to beautify an area, so flowers might be nice, or planting a food supply such as herbs and veggies is a goal, you may want to choose a hardier vegetable or herb such as tomatoes or dill. I’d recommend doing a mix of both.
One thing you could try to increase the likelihood of the seeds that accidentally fell our of your pockets have a better chance of making it, you can make seed bombs:
Josiah’s Seed Bomb Recipe
-2 part organic soil
-5 parts pottery clay (you can purchase online or from a local art store)
-1-2 parts water
-1-2 parts mixed flower & veggie seeds
Directions: Prepare the clay soil mixture by kneading and slowly adding the water until becoming consistent. Add the seeds and mix thoroughly into the clay mix. Begin grabbing bits of the mixture in the size of small golf balls. Let dry for 24-48 hrs. Keep in a cardboard box. You can throw them out the window of a moving vehicle or chuck them into ditches, buildings, etc.
You can obviously choose whatever method you want. If you are just visiting downtown and live elsewhere, it’s best to do quantity over quality, just whatever you can fit in your pockets really: flowers, bulbs, cannabis seeds, veggies, etc. But if you live close by or within the vicinity of downtown, you can more easily check your work later and begin creating designated spots for planting and eventually if enough are successful, you’ll be able to yield a decent crop from basically sacrificing absolutely nothing on your part, aside from a small amount of risk and a few hours total of your time. I think that eventually, you would want these areas, which you keep track from memory either by memorizing familiar landmarks (e.g. by that black fence post, near mile marker 80 on route 44, or on the sunny side of the Geist factory building) or through the use of a handheld GPS with lat / log functions (or an app on your YouSpyOnMe Phone Version XXIV or better yet GhostPad1 with GPS USB device), and then also if you have an abundance, you might encourage others to either take part in additional planting, harvesting, and the best part, enjoying by consuming free, nourishing, sustainable food—now who says you can’t do anything useful in a city?
Yet another method of guerrilla gardening is of the activist variety, or what Ben Stone in his book Sedition, Subversion, & Sabotage Field Manual No. 12. This method will obviously be considerably more risky than a few hours trip into the city with some seed bombs or a drive by seeding. It’s about proving a point to yourself and others, to gum up the wheels, or otherwise call out the ruling class and its appendages (e.g. The Media, The Military Industrial Complex, The Corporate Public-Private Partnership, State Bureaucrats, State Enforcers, The Surveillance State, or the Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex, just to name a few). A well- known example from Mr. Stone includes:
“Planting poison ivy at the offices of Raytheon.”
You have the freedom to be as creative as you want, but you might identify some targets of opportunity and what exactly you are trying to accomplish, whether it be silly pranks that draw attention to a particular wrong committed by the aforementioned appendages and then televising it fairly easily by blasting across social media outlets, or just outright sabotage, like planting seeds of an invasive species in the front yard of a police station or other government building. Sabotaging public property (simultaneously owned by no one but everyone at the same time) can also be a beautiful art form, in line with graffiti art and sculpture. Using vegetation in this manner can be your voice, but just err on the side of caution since you are now risking possible arrest, detainment, increased surveillance, and fines (aka how much it costs to do something). I am in no way suggesting or telling you to do something illegal, merely hypothetically stating a point. Another great example of this is planting things that the State deems to be “illegal” such as cannabis, cultivating psilocybin or poppies on public lands for the purposes of making them more readily accessible to the point where said “words on paper” (laws) become unenforceable—
“Honey, I’m taking a walk in my friendly neighborhood suburban park to harvest some budz, be back soon!”
In my own personal experience, I’ve allegedly started guerrilla gardening only a few months ago in the urban area around me and on weekly walks through “sketchy” areas (bars, strip clubs, and abandoned warehouses, oh my!). I started with a few seed drops away from surveillance cameras and within the vicinity of a few homeless encampments. Although it’s winter, many of the things I planted, such as the bulbs and hardy bean seeds should start showing up in the spring. From there I plan to continue planting and cultivating those areas. There are also areas near a skate park, urban decayed areas near urban art, and sunny areas in the valley areas underneath a few bridges near the river. These are all areas I’ve scouted over multiple weeks and know them to be almost free of enforcer patrols at least in the designated times that I walk those areas. My long term goal is more of a “people want to see others doing it before they do” kind of thing where if someone sees a big garden they might also join in. If it’s going to be a community garden it’s going to happen organically and without permit, papers, or permission—fuck that.
So there you have it. I’ve supplied you a few methods of guerrilla gardening in urban areas. I think cities are great candidates for transforming the abandoned structures, buildings, and infrastructure into beautiful gardens that can help feed the vast homeless and contribute to decreasing dependence on inefficiencies in supply chain by focusing on things locally (“localism”). We have all we need right here.
Your handy work can be as stealthy or active as you want it to be. The city is your blank canvas, now, go forth, and guerrilla garden! JW
Footnotes
1 Get you GhostPad here: https://libertyunderattack.com/product/vonupad3-ghostpad-t420c-privacy-laptop/
2 Sedition, Subversion, & Sabotage Field Manual No. 1, by Ben Stone: