Urban Guerilla 2: The Street Green Space Occupation Action Is Here
Text by Yang Yijing, member of the Gorilla Green Guerrillas
Guerrilla gardening may sound cool, but it is by no means a new product of the twenty-first century.
As early as several centuries ago, the Romanian Gypsies of northwestern India, on their collective migrations and relocations, would seek out land that had ceased to be productive and farm it themselves; during World War II, people in many countries also took to cultivating idle land near their homes in order to increase their food sources.
Since the 1960s, whether to change capitalism's values regarding land use, to fight for public space, to improve community environments, to secure food sources, to make a living, or simply because they loved gardening and wanted to rediscover their connection with nature and the land, tens of thousands of guerrilla gardening actions have taken place around the world.
In 1977, a group of people living on West 48th Street in New York discovered that many tomato plants had grown out of a pile of rubble, and that this had happened on a vacant lot that had lain idle for nearly thirty years. A thought sprouted in their minds: "Why not turn this plot into a real garden?" And so the group "Clinton Community Garden" was born, completing their garden in 1980, and more than thirty years later they are still going strong.
The garden completed by Clinton Community Garden in 1980
Richard Reynolds, author of "On Guerrilla Gardening," loves gardening but had always struggled with having no space in which to practice it. So starting in 2004, he began displaying his green thumb in London in a "guerrilla" manner, transforming countless overlooked corners into charming flower stands and flower beds, and using media such as the internet and books to encourage more people to join this spontaneous guerrilla gardening movement to change their living environments.
If you don't want to plant flowers, you can plant something else! The group "Fallen Fruit" has the very distinctive approach of planting only fruit trees and no flowers. They not only enjoy the process of planting, but also enjoy the "results" of planting. All kinds of interesting activities unfold around the fruit trees, and they have even made many "public fruit maps" and posted them online for people to browse. If one day you happen to visit the city of "Fallen Fruit," perhaps you could take a fallen-fruit discovery tour, or even leave your own fallen fruit there.
And the largest collective guerrilla action known today is probably none other than the "Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement (MST)." In the twenty years since MST was founded, it has helped more than 250,000 families occupy barren land, build homes, grow edible crops, and farm for themselves, enabling these poor people to survive under Brazil's extremely unequal social system.
Brazilian landless farmers planting on the land of their new homes
The several guerrilla groups that have sprung up in Taiwan, China over the past two years also don't plant flowers. In Taipei, "Jiu Gan Xin," which cares about urban renewal issues, planted small saplings on green spaces participating in "Taipei Beautiful Series 2," thereby reminding people that public land must provide public use and that urban development is closely tied to everyone; "Gong Li She" likewise carries out guerrilla actions on green spaces participating in the Taipei Beautiful plan. They always wait for a dark and windy night to dig holes and scatter vegetable seeds on these green spaces, feeling the "hardness" of temporary green spaces in the process.
In Zhubei, a group of students from National Chiao Tung University formed the "Guerrilla Farming Team" and, on the land of the "Raw Jade Project" planning area that was originally a rice paddy, planted water spinach, swamp cabbage, scallions, green beans, potatoes, pumpkins, and watermelons, hoping that by restoring these lands to their original productive use, they could build a bridge of communication between students and local residents and help people understand the stories of these lands.
The "Gorilla Green Guerrillas" (us) care about issues such as urban micro-farming and edible landscapes. We always gather friends beforehand or recruit people on the spot, treating each guerrilla action as environmental education and civic education in an urban classroom, inviting people who are interested or curious to joyfully plant vegetables or herb plants together in vacant lots, temporary green spaces created by the Taipei Beautiful plan, monotonous lawns on campuses, and even idle tree pits and flower stands along roadsides.
Besides actually getting your hands dirty with guerrilla planting, there are many simple and fun things you can do. In Toronto, Canada, the organization "Public Space" believes that guerrilla gardening is "graffiti with nature." They not only carry out guerrilla actions themselves, but also use interesting signage to encourage passersby to help water the plants.
Another interesting action group is "REBAR." They care about the relationship between the public spaces seen everywhere in cities and people's lives, so they "kidnap public space" by planting things in parking spaces, sunbathing, and even holding street concerts, letting themselves and passersby enjoy a leisurely Park(ing) Day.
Hello, who else is out there doing guerrilla gardening? Will it be you? How do you plan to do your guerrilla gardening?
A group from REBAR enjoying a leisurely afternoon tea in a parking space
Related links:
● Gorilla Green Guerrillas blog
or search "Gorilla Green Guerrillas" on Facebook
● "On Guerrilla Gardening" author Richard Reynolds's blog
● Clinton Community Garden
● Fallen Fruit
● Friends of the MST
● Jiu Gan Xin
● Schoolbag Farming in Zhubei (an article written by GOAT, a member of the NCTU Guerrilla Farming Team, in NCTU's "Not Going to College Gazette")
● Public Space
● REBAR