Just stumbled across this great article from The Guardian website. It’s very inspiring and uplifting so I had to share it with you because I know you’ll love it too. If you don’t have time to read the whole thing right now (it’s not very long actually), here’s a few quotes from Ellen Miles:

“Guerrilla gardening is the practice of planting in public spaces in your neighbourhood” she says on a humid summer afternoon, walking between outlaw flower beds in Hackney, east London.

“And that’s how I define it … because, for me, it’s all about community ownership and belonging, and I think we have a right to cultivate these spaces in the areas we call home – and a responsibility to, as well.

“So-called public spaces have been really privatised, and communities actually don’t get a chance to interact with them often. So I think we do have a right to do that in the places we put down our roots, where we live.

“… for me guerrilla gardening is the Trojan horse into anarchist ideals.

“It’s wholesome, but that’s the thing: [anarchism] is not about violence and hate, it can be wholesome. And it’s fundamentally about bringing people together to shape the places we live. We shouldn’t be prevented from improving our neighbourhoods by powers that don’t really live here or care.”

“Guerrilla gardening is like the ground up, grassroots way to make neighbourhoods greener and connect people to nature, and the nature is a human right campaign is the long-term, top-down way to do it,”

“I see it all as fighting for the same kind of thing really: a world where human habitats are more filled with nature than they are deprived of it, and where there’s equitable access to nature.”

“I do think there is an issue in society at the moment with the lack of agency and autonomy for people,” she says. “Guerrilla gardening, even if it is just sowing something in a tree bed, it might not change the world – you might help some bees, you might bring joy to someone walking down the street – but you’re also reminding people, or awakening something that is like ‘Maybe this is how it should be.’

“We know now that we can’t trust the government to do this stuff. We have to take it into our own hands.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/28/i-call-it-botanarchy-the-hackney-guerrilla-gardener-bringing-power-to-the-people