Guerrilla Gardening

“Scarlet Begonias” – July 2011 – Whitney Avenue – Wilkinsburg, PA

These Page are Under Construction – THEY WILL CHANGE REGULARLY

The posts in this series are meant to read like a book… Essentially this is a guerrilla book about guerrilla gardening available online for free… At least for now… I may pull the entire thing and publish it… But for now… It will remain free…

Table of Contents

1.   Definition and Introduction
2.   Site Selection
3.   Traffic
4.   Soil Conditions
5.   Sunlight
6.   Water
7.   Plant Selection
8.   Annuals
9.   Perennials
10. Vegetables
11. Fruit and Nuts
12. Trees and Shrubs
13. Vines and Groundcovers
14. Bulbs
15. Seed Bombs
16. Pests
17. Short-Term Maintenance
18. Long-Term Maintenance
19. Vandalism
20. Safety

Urban gardens can contain ornamental or food producing plants, your specific environment will be the deciding factor of what can appropriately and safely be grown. Urban garden locations tend to be opportunistic, concrete often fills most of the prime ground space offering a limited amount of choices. Although the locations can be limited, there is a plant for every location type… The purpose of this book is to help guide you through the process from planning to harvest, using my own experiences as a guide.

I have been a gardener for my entire life, but I am writing this book based on my own experience over the past five years as an urban and guerrilla gardener. I live in an apartment, where I have created a pretty great garden, I have also planted guerrilla gardens all over the neighborhood, some successful, and many unsuccessful. I have never taken a grant or received a donation for any of my guerrilla gardens, or farms. This article is therefore written from the perspective of a gardener who has very little money.

Guerrilla gardening has the ability to not only add color and life to an otherwise lifeless area, it can raise the spirits of all inhabitants in a neighborhood. I have seen it rekindle the love of gardening, eventually leading to multiple “homeowner” maintained gardens surrounding the original guerrilla effort. Neighborhoods that were once litter covered and used as dumps by people in the surrounding communities steadily see a decline in litter and dumping. Neighbors that at one time were combatant with each other suddenly become friends, creating a front porch community where there was not one before. I have seen the incredible power guerrilla gardening can have, my intention is to transfer the spark that got me interested into you…

A neighborhood may not be initially welcoming of your new effort, it is important to remember that very few people like change. Sometimes people will simply dislike the added attention the neighborhood is receiving. I have heard every excuse in the book, yet only two people in five years consistently gave me problems about my gardens… Lots of people talk shit behind my back… Calling me strange and a freak… In response to that I say… You are right… I am strange… Though my mother tells me I’m special…

Apparently, some guerrilla gardeners operate at night, I’m going to go ahead and advise against this. For starters, nothing looks more suspicious in an urban neighborhood than people dressed in black trying to be inconspicuous… To me, this seems like nothing more than a great opportunity to learn what it feels like to have a cop draw his weapon on you. My advise is to operate in full daylight, and act like you have every right to be doing what you are doing… The best way to look shady is to attempt to look inconspicuous… The second reason is simply safety, darkness makes the unaware individual a target to potential criminal activity. Given the urban nature of the act of guerrilla gardening, both of these issues can lead to life changing events or legal actions.

This page is meant to read like a book, each chapter below will link to the appropriate blog posts. These posts will be releases over the next few weeks. If a chapter is not blue, I have not yet released it.

plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello

This site… And all the photographs and information presented within are provided free of charge by the author… I am not affiliated with any product or business… Only myself… Writing this blog takes a ton of time… If you find any of this information helpful, please consider purchasing a print from my online store… It is obviously not a requirement… But it helps…

I sell prints of my photography here- http://www.society6.com/chriscondello Or you can contact me directly at c.condello@hotmail.com for commissions or locally/personally produced prints… Thank you for reading…

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.