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.”
Photo by David Levene/The Guardian
“Guerrilla gardening is like the ground up, grassroots way to make neighbourhoods greener and connect people to nature, and thenature is a human rightcampaign 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.”
and they grew (well some of them died, but some of them grew)
And we checked in on them in 2015 and again in 2016 and they just kept on growing!
So we planted them outside in the ground. We thought the chickens might like them for shade when they’re bigger, but while they’re still young we put some wood around them to keep the girls from scratching the earth off their roots. There’s four in here (I wonder if you’ll be able to spot them all), and two of them are taller than me! The 8 to 10 years wikihow said we’d have to wait for fruit seemed like a long time, but it’s been 3 years already and time’s just flying 😀
NB this is not my garden 🙂 but luckily we were able to plant them here. So, if you don’t have anywhere of your own to plant them, look for a suitable spot on public property where they won’t get hacked down by farm machinery and then everyone can enjoy them. Check out the Scottish Forest Gardener to see how he successfully plants trees on council property 🙂
Plant trees! You know it makes sense 😉
Update 2024:
These trees are now ten years old so they might blossom and fruit this year but sadly we had to move away from that garden three years ago so we’ll never know for sure. But check out the last pictures we’ve got of these trees here [in 2020] and you can see how big they’d grown as I photographed them with a six foot man standing next to them 😀
Prompted by our new and exciting interest in growing our food we’ve found something garden-related for you to enjoy 🙂
And if, after that, you’re feeling inspired, as we are, to indulge in some forest gardening, take a look at this gem of a blog I found yesterday – Of Plums and Pignuts – it’s choc full of inspiration. This post in particular gives you that “anything’s possible” excitement that makes you want to just get out there and do it! 😉
One day we caught the bus into the city and on the way, in the middle of nowhere, the bus stopped to pick someone up. Right next to the bus stop, on the wide grass verge, was a large apple tree. It was full of apples. An apple tree, in the middle of nowhere, by a bus stop, apparently not belonging to anyone. Free apples for anyone who chose to help themselves.
“How brilliant!” we thought. We should all plant fruit and nut trees at every opportunity, and provide free food for foragers. Food that will keep being produced year after year without any help from us.
So, we looked up how to grow an apple tree from seed (turns out there’s seed drying, seed damp-wrapping and seed cooling to be done, plus some weeks of waiting) and began 🙂
This was taken in January of our first seedling
And this is what it looks like now
So far we have 3 little apple trees going strong, all different varieties as advised on wikihow
It’s very exciting to watch them grow 😀
According to wikihow these trees, grown from seed, will be big (so we’ll have to carefully consider where we plant them) and it will probably be 10 years before they produce any fruit – but so what? We’re planting for the future, and that’s very cool! It doesn’t cost us anything and it’s a very positive thing to do. Why don’t you have a go? Here’s how
Fancy growing other types of tree from seeds you’ve collected? No problem – just look at this brilliant web page
UPDATES:
Look here to see how our little apple trees are doing 14 months later 🙂
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