Guerrilla gardening is a movement of radical environmentalists and sustainability advocates searching out marginal, forgotten, and/or neglected spaces and planting beneficial vegetation. Imagine recurrent visits to abandoned lots to take over green space for vegetables to supplement your fresh produce. Conceive of weaponry as seed bombs, filled with a variety of beneficial plant seeds in a compact compost fertilizer mix, shown below. This movement represents a force a collaborative coalition-based organizing (versus oppositional, e.g. anti-Iraq war organizing) as we have the bright potential to solve the problems we see regarding derelict, marginal public/abandoned spaces.
The LA Times Home and Garden Section recently featured the brooding movement of guerilla gardening in SoCal. It traces some of the history of other vacant/neglected space gardening movements. As urban designers and landscape architects, we are charged with providing legal policy and informationally supportive frameworks to support such citizen-led reclamation efforts. Another strong historical reference beyond what I can personally prepare is from the British resource blog at Guerilla Gardening. This site also has community links to find local guerilla gardeners across the globe, though its highly tilted towards European/Neo-European resources. There are also blogs set up for GG groups working in LA and Santa Barbara.
