How Guerrilla Gardening Works

start making up new names for it. Will be like, wait, did I down a little the right one? Yeah? Um, so, Chuck as uh as I am usually want to do. I have an anecdote from my past that will nicely segue into what we should tell what we should talk about today. I like these because they always I don't know about these beforehand, I really don't, so they're always interesting. This one's not, you know, by comparison, it's not that good,

So don't get your hopes. Okay, but um, you know, when I was a slightly younger man in my early teens, I had a friend, um named Jeremy, whose dad was a firefighter, and here was this tough guy, but he, um, he also was fairly cultivated, you know, cultured um and uh, he and his friends, some of them firefighter buddies, used to go out at night and engage in what they called clumping all right now, and I've never heard of

it before or since. I think they made it up actually, um, but clumping involved going into somebody's yard and stealing plants that you liked and then taking them back to your yard and planning them there. Um a firefighter to do anything exactly. Yeah, well, you know, if he's saving lives, I think he can kind of get something of a past. But it always struck me as a little um wrong. Maybe it is stealing quite clearly, um. But but at the same time, it's like it's even more than stealing,

you know. It's it's not like stealing somebody's cell phone. You don't have anything really attached that except you know, maybe your your your phone book in it. This is, you know, somebody is cultivating a garden. Somebody's taking the time to to plan this and intend to it, and now all of a sudden there's huge holes filled with stealing their time. You're stealing their or their money that they put into the planting. Sure now comes to the segue. You want to know what the opposite of that is.

I have a good feeling guerrilla gardening. That's precisely right. And and chuck, Now, I know there has been um some discrepancy in the very recent past. We're talking uh the guerrilla as in like guerrilla warfare, right right, not the apes gardening girllas. Aren't apes, are they? I can never remember. I don't know, I know the primates. Let's go with that, okay. Um, so yeah, we're talking guerrilla gardening.

And it is pretty much what it sounds like. It's you know, making stealth maneuvers into uh usually untended areas or neglected or overgrown vacant lots, that that kind of thing, and you know, tilling the soil, weed it and planning new stuff. Yeah. I think this is really really cool. I do too, because it's subversive, which you know, I'm

I'm very hit to, like you know, the smart mobs thing, right. Um, but it doesn't harm anyone, doesn't harm anyone, know, as a matter of fact, that makes the the world or the city or wherever you live. And you're doing this a much better place, although some people still try and shut it down, which we'll get to later. Yeah, good, because I got a great line for that. Yeah. So, um, you want to give a little background, a little history

on guerilla gardening. Yeah, sure. Originally I believe it started in New York City in the early seventies, the modern the modern version did, yes, right, Do you have info on the ancient version? Apparently it goes back to sixty nine when a guy named Gerard Winston Lee I believe he's from Surrey, England. He started a group called the Diggers and they were basically the first guerilla gardeners. They just went into places that they didn't own, plots of

land they didn't known, and started planting. I wonder if they were planting crops. Actually they were planning vegetables. Yeah. Well, the modern version started in the early seventies in New York and there was a resident there named Liz Christie, and she founded the Green Guerrillas and they started hitting up local lots and planting flowers. And the first one, I believe was at the corner of a bower which I know well. And did you know Bowery is actually

Dutch for farm. Really. Yeah, maybe that's why they picked it. I found it on the the Green Gorilla's website. Cool. Yeah, so they Christie and the Green Gorillas. Um actually kind of had a hard fought struggle at first, that that place at the corner of Bowery in Houston that had little housing, sorry, that little neglected park that no one cared about. All of a sudden, now that they're tending to it and planning stuff. They had they had a fight on their hands with with the city. I believe.

I didn't realize that. Actually, yeah, they had. They had some thing of a struggle, and um, finally the city, the city gave in, saw the error of its ways after about a year and legitimized it and it became this community garden. Now it's a memorial park dedicated to Liz Christie. Very cool in New York. I have to

go by. But she was the one who originated seed bombs. Yeah, these are really cool, and originally she was she was using um condoms filled with tomato seeds or some some kind of seeds and like compost and then you know, hurling them into a vacant lot or something like interesting and the condom would disintegrate. No, no, no, so they didn't work. I mean it worked. I think the water would get get into it or something like that, or

maybe she slid it. But even after the stuff planted, you still have a prophylactic um laying around, which really bacons up a lot. You know. Have you been to New York City though I have, but not since I was young. Yeah, the condom on the street isn't the strangest thing right now, I've seen quite a few. But

there are greener ways to do it, right, Yeah. I think nowadays the seed bomb is evolved into a clay mixture with like some clay and compost and seed and water and you just form into a little ball and you can just literally you can toss these from your car. And it has to be something obviously that can can grow from not having to dig and plant it into

the ground. But yeah, it's a seed bomb. Pretty cool. Yeah, And apparently what like they they're dried out and then when it rains, the thing kind of reconstitutes or dissolves, and then the seeds are spread and there's this compost that that feeds it. Right, Ideally, I think the seed bombs are done either in the rain or before it rains, right before it rains. That's very cool. Yeah. And and like you said, you can throw them from a moving car, you know, just kind of drive around and you're just

you know, guerrilla gardening, guerrilla gardening, spreading beauty. Yeah, exactly. And I saw a cool video on the Guardians website of a guy named Richard Reynolds. Yeah, did you see him making seed bombs? Yeah, there's there's a great how to video if if any of you guys out there in podcast land or interest it in making your own seed bombs, there's a great how to step by step video um with Richard Reynolds. And you're absolutely right, he

is a cool dude. He's a very cool dude. Um. While we're on Richard, he's he was the founder of the London grilla guardening movement from what I understand, and has a great website Gorilla Guardening dot org. Yeah, it's pretty much like the definitive guerrilla gardening website. I know, in a Google search of the typing guerilla gardening, it's definitely the first one that comes up, which is because

seems the most legitimate as well. Yeah, um, he actually I read a cool thing on his website today where he um had been taken care of. It may have been his own apartment complex. It was the Horse and Elephant or the Buggy and something around right. I love the names for the pretty cool. It's very cool. So yeah, he was had been taking care of his own garden there and eventually got um. The residents had been paying uh money towards maintenance, lawn maintenance, and basically the residents

started to say, hey, this is kind of fraudulent. This guy has been doing this free. We're paying money for nothing. And he actually got refunded. Uh. The ninety residents he had their money refunded for like a three year period was about a hundred pounds, and every everything was going swimmingly. After that, he had um some sort of at least verbal consensus between the paid groundkeepers, the building's owners, and himself that he would take care of this this area,

this common area. And he's doing a heck of a job. The guy has you know, he's he's a great gardener to begin with. UM. But as long as he gave the management a month a month's notice that he was going to stop so they could get that company back in there to do their you know, terrible job of taking care of it. So he's got this agreement and then all of a sudden things just go sideways and he's got problems again. And the one problem, you know,

it's it's mind boggling to me. If you have a vacant lot, if you have a common area, if there's a place where, um, it's just being neglected, and then somebody very uh, very benevolently just starts taking care of it,

plant it. What's the problem. But the problem is is there is guerrilla gardening also kind of inadvertently serves as a slap in the face to people who are very interested in rules and procedure and you know, like they're County Cordon code Enforcement's phone number by heart, and that's all you have to do. It's called code enforcement. And all of a sudden, this this great act is now criminal, which it wasn't the first place, but everybody kind of looks the other way, right. Did you see the video

on his site where they got shut down? No? I didn't see them. Yeah, it's on YouTube as well, and it's on his website. And they were actually tending to a an area underneath a street sign I believe in London on a corner and uh at night, usually it's gardening at night. Uh. Thanks to r M, we can give them a little shout out and they do this undercover the night quite often. And the cops came by and they shut him down. It's all on tape and he gets into a little minor argument with them that

they're beautifying the area and the cops uh. And of course these are cops in London, so it's all very polite. You know. In the United States, that would go down much differently. And eventually they you know, they actually left because they threatened to arrest them and um, but they snuck back a couple of hours later and finish the job for them. Yeah. And and yes, I noticed there's like clips and and um photo documentaries of like him all over the world doing like guerrilla gardening. Yeah, and

it is all over the world. I saw that there were sites in German and Australia, and here in the United States are a lot of groups. And like you were pointing out, we don't or I pointed out, we don't have one here in Atlanta. Um. But you mentioned that you don't necessarily have to have a group, an organized group that does this in a website. You can you can do it on your own. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't get much more low tech than than seed bombs,

you know. And you could, like you said, just drive around, throw them out the window, see what happens. But yeah, you could go so far as to organize a group right well, which is kind of the cool thing I think. Um, it goes a little bit beyond just the gardening and beautification. A lot of times, it's bringing the community together in a cool way, just like when you there's groups that

go around and pick up trash that kind of thing. Yeah. Now, um, I know on reynolds site there's something called troop digs. I think it's like the forum you can go and find out who's digging in your area right where they're going to be that kind of thing, or who you need to contact. Um and and some people from what I've read about reynalds, he uh is completely into beautification. That his only motive. But there's there's also a very

political aspect to it. To grilla gardening. Um, it's all it can be a form of protest of you know, capitalism, of of urban blight. That that kind of thing, the city won't take care of itself, so we will, right exactly. Um. And also of like food costs, that can be a protest of that, right. Um. And actually there's this guy in I believe Boulder, Colorado this past summer's name was Scott Hoffenburg, and he got slept with the two thousand

dollar a day fine for guerrilla gardening. Really, and the reason he was doing it, he said, was because food prices had gotten out of hand. So he in a neighbor took up this little right away, you know, the little strips in between the sidewalk in the street. They just planted a bunch of cucumbers and tomatoes and squash and all this kind of thing. And um that some some one of those people with rules and procedures, you know, called the co enforcement. So luckily the county said they're

going to try to work with the guy. And I never I didn't hear what happened, but I have a feeling that if you're a guerrilla gardener and you're gardening actually right out front of your house and they're threatening a two thousand dollar fine, that would probably go a long way to get you to comply. With those rules and procedures. Yeah, you know, I'd like to pick someone's brain. He was really against us. Yeah, I want to meet the person who sees what's going on and goes home

and it's just, yeah, dare they plant those flowers right there? Yeah? I'm just I'm curious, what's what's happening there? Yeah, And I don't think I could explain it. But I know for a fact that I've met people like that before. It's always a little unsettling. These are probably the same people that are the neighborhood associations that just flip out when someone's mailbox looks different than the rest. And yeah, those those people are a lot of fun. I used

to have a friend who lived in my subdivision. His family routinely got um letters from the neighborhood association to you know, move the water skis out from in front of the garage and that kind of thing. It's crazy. It was weird. Um so but okay, so Chuck. Both of us have expressed an interest in guerilla gardening. Let's say somebody who's listening to us, you know, wants to get started. Not everybody's against this. And actually, from what

I understand. Um, local nurseries have a tendency to really kind of support this kind of thing. Yeah, they have dead plants nobody's gonna buy anyway that may or may not come back to life. Why not? So what what should what should people look for when they're doing this? But I just want to point out this very nice imperson impersonation but have tol you just like to help me? Yeah,

I wish people could have seen that. Um. Well, first thing you want to do is find out, you know, identify your location of where you want to do this. So look for, like you said, sometimes the little strips of land between the street and the sidewalk that are full of trash or grown over with weeds. Those are good spots corners that have those. And then you want to, uh find out what kind of plants you want. Uh, indigenous species are good, non invasive, non invasive. You don't

want to like plant the new cud zoo or anything. Right, which for you non Southerners is a very fast growing week just that just takes over absolutely everything. Right, It can kill an eight foot oak tree in a year or two, right, Thank you Japan for that exactly. Uh. So, yeah, you want to pick out the right plants, and you also, I mean you're you're gonna be It's not like you just plant this and then you just leave forever. I mean, if you really want to do it right, you want

to upkeep it. So if you don't have a ton of time, you want to pick some plants that require as little upkeep as possible. Yeah, like drought resistant plants, because the law of comments everybody he wants to take as much out of this common pool and put as little back as possible, well as far as economists would say. Um so yeah, so if you have drought resistant plants, you can, you know, leave it up to the universe to take care of it. I hate that ad I know.

Uh so, uh yeah, you've got your plants, you've eat. When you need to get your plants, you can ask for donations, or you can buy him yourself if you've got a extra cash, gather up a little team, or if you just want to do it yourself, if it's doable by yourself, and then you know, you go out.

A lot of people do it at night. Um here in Atlanta, I think in my neighborhood, I could go out in the middle of the day and no one would do totally no same here, I think as well, and there's plenty of lots around my house that I could get to experise it. Let's do that. Well, maybe we should, all right, and if any of you out there interested in getting into guerrilla gardening, uh, we would suggest checking out guerrilla Gardening dot org Richard Renald site.

He also has a book um based on the advice of Chairman Mao and Shay Gavara, but about guerrilla gardening in a of course, you would also be interested in visiting our humble website. You can type in guerrilla gardening in the search bar and how Stuff Works dot com and Chuck, what do you have for us? Do we have any listener mail? Yep, we have some listener mail.

Listener mail time. So this letter, Josh comes to us from a lady named Leah Johnson, and uh, Leah says, I liked your how Echo Anxiety Works article, and I also liked how you mentioned the vulture vomit at the end. Oh, yes, this is a good letter. I have, in fact been puked on by a Turkey vulture and it was disgusting. I was part of a raptor rehabilitation program, and we had outdoor housing for them, which we cleaned out once

a week. Every time I went to get the turkey vulture out so we could clean it out, or just to give him some time outside, he'd panic and puke all over the over the place, including on me. Unfortunately, I always had on gloves when handling the bird, so the acidity wasn't so much a problem as a terrible smell from the bird of prey diet we were feeding him. Anyway. Thanks for making my days better if I give me something interesting to listen to, and YadA, YadA, YadA, we

love you. That's great. Well, Leah, because you send in your listener email and uh, because of your selfless care of birds of prey, we're gonna send you our set of how stuff Work steak knives are you and yours? We hope you enjoy them. And if anything else anyone else out there wants to send us an email, you can send it to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. Send it for more on this and thousands of other topics. Because at how stuff works dot com.

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