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  • From: Keith Johnson <keithdj@mindspring.com>
  • To: Permaculture ibiblio <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>, Plants for a future list <pfaf@yahoogroups.com>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Encouraging "volunteer" crops in urban landscapes
  • Date: Tue, 05 Oct 2010 22:26:58 -0400

In Bloomington, IN, there are lots of community gardens, a new community orchard, urban farmers, farmers markets, university gardeners, local seed growers / sellers cooperation, increasing levels of garden / farmer training and support.

We don't have any "official" guerrilla gardening groups locally (that I know of) but as a seed saver I find myself thinking about all the things in my garden that could grow on their own, or with little support, in wilder urban niches. I have in mind a diversity of plants with multiple yields and the creation of mixed seed / cutting collections of locally adapted, low maintenance, often self-sowing, occasionally high nutritional value, beneficial insect / bee / butterfly attracting, colorful, fragrant, sometimes perennial, economically valuable, nitrogen-fixing, wildlife food / habitat, and mineral-accumulating types of plants that could also partially self-employ those who establish / manage / harvest them.

Maybe a tall order but doable, I think..

A few of the plants that would lend themselves to some neglect under less-cared-for conditions in my local (going on zone 7 [was zone 5 25 years ago]) list include (in no particular order)

amaranth,
magenta lamb's quarters,
cilantro,
dill,
carrot (especially the cosmic red and purples which bloom in rosy pinks and are swarmed by beneficials),
walking or Egyptian onion,
leek,
chard,
lettuce,
radish,
ground cherry (Physalis spp.), tomatillo,
broom corn (Sorghum),
wheat,
long beans,
lablab beans (hyacinth bean),
sunflowers,
balsam impatiens (I grew them as understory in the asparagus and scattered through the garden and they shaded out weedy competition beautifully, butterflies and pollinators love them, simple and effortless to weed),
cup plant (Sylphium),
indigo (Indigofera tinctoria [polygonaceae], I have white- and pink-flowered types of this beautiful blue-dye plant that self-sow in the greenhouse and outdoors);
the moschata branch of the cucurbits (solid stem, borer resistant) and includes tromboncino, butternut and others;
orach (Chenopodium),
motherwort (careful, succeeds easily in poor soil),
celosias (very elegant, colorful and beneficial hosts),
garlic (plant cloves or bulbils),
field / winter / Austrian peas,
kale,
collards,
senna (short woody, N-fix, bee forage, yellow flowers for 1-2 months),
baptisia (blue, yellow and white varieties, perennial, N-fix),
Amorpha fruticosa ("false indigo", bee forage, fodder, mulch, N - highly recommended),
cherry tomatoes,
buckwheat,
liatris,
hollyhocks,
zinnias,
marigolds,
hibiscus,
sweet potatoes,
stonefruit,
paw paws,
service berry (from seed and side shoots),
currant / gooseberry (from cuttings),
thornless blackberries and
che fruit (melon berry / Chinese mulberry, fig / mulberry family, can be grafted onto wild Osage orange [Maclura]).
Apples could be grafted onto crab apples and hawthornes, pears on to ornamental pears.

What would your local lists look like?
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Any groups like these (below) happening in your regions?
(Snip) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_gardening
Greenaid

Greenaid is a Los Angeles based organization founded in 2010 by Daniel Phillips and Kim Karlsrud of Common Studio. The organization converts vintage gumball machines to dispense seedbombs, a combination of clay, compost and region-specific seeds. Once dispensed, seedbombs are tossed or planted in any area that may benefit from wildflowers. Greenaid partners with business owners, educators and citizens to distribute seedbomb vending machines in various communities worldwide. With region-specific seedbomb mixes, Greenaid aims to integrate and beautify rather than disrupt traditionally bland urban areas such as sidewalks and highway medians. In July 2010, Greenaid received $10,398 in funding from the Kickstarter community. This funding will be used to spread the initiative to new locations and support current operations.
Utah

In Northern Utah, apple trees commonly grow along the banks of canals. Asparagus grows along the smaller ditch banks. Many of these plants were seeded 150 years ago by the workers who dug the canals, by burying their lunch apple core in the freshly dug soil or by surreptitiously spreading seeds along a new ditchbank. Guerrilla gardening continues today, as individuals secretly plant fruit trees, edible perennials, and flowers in parks, along bike trails, etc. Some guerrilla gardeners do so for the purpose of providing food. For example, the Tacamiche banana plantation workers in Honduras illegally grew vegetables on the abandoned plantation land, rather than leave with the plantation's closure in 1995.
Pure Genius!!

One high-profile example of guerrilla gardening took place in May 1996, when about 500 activists affiliated with The Land is Ours, including the journalist George Monbiot, occupied 13 acres (53,000 m2) of derelict land belonging to the Guinness company on the banks of the River Thames in Wandsworth, South London. Their action aimed to highlight what they described as "the appalling misuse of urban land, the lack of provision of affordable housing and the deterioration of the urban environment."
A community grew up on the site called "Pure Genius!!" (named after the Guinness advertising slogan). They lived there for five and a half months before being evicted.
Have på en nat

Later, on 1 July 1996, Have på en nat ("Garden in a night") was made by the Danish Økologiske Igangsættere ("Organic starters").

An empty piece of land in the middle of the city at Guldbergsgade in Nørrebro, Copenhagen, Denmark, was transformed into a garden in a single night. About 1000 people took part in the project.
May Day 2000

On May Day 2000, Reclaim the Streets organised a mass guerrilla gardening action in Parliament Square, London. After a carnivalesque procession with a samba band and a Critical Mass bike ride from Hyde Park, thousands of guerrilla gardeners occupied the square and planted vegetables and flowers. A maypole was erected, around which many of the gardeners danced. Banners hung in the square reading "Resistance is Fertile" (a pun on futile), "Let London Sprout", "Capitalism is Pants", and "The Earth is a Common Treasury for All", the latter being a quote from the seventeenth-century Digger Gerrard Winstanley. An Indymedia public access terminal was set up in the new allotment, and the statue of Winston Churchill was given a green turf mohican. The perpetrator (an ex-British soldier) was fined for his vandalism of the Churchill statue.
International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day 1 May

In 2007 guerrilla gardeners in Brussels, known as The Brussels Farmers [2], declared 1 May International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day. This is a day in which guerrilla gardeners around the world plant sunflower seeds in public places within their neighborhood (in practice this event is limited to regions of the northern hemisphere where the climate and season are most appropriate). Participants in that first year included Brussels, London and Bordeaux. Every year since then the occasion has gained momentum and been promoted through the GuerrillaGardening.org network and in 2010 more than 5000 signed up to take part.
Leaf Street Community Garden

Leaf Street is an acre of land in Hulme, Manchester, England, that was once an urban street until turfed over by Manchester City Council. Local people, facilitated by Manchester Permaculture Group, took direct action in turning the site into a thriving community garden.

Abahlali baseMjondolo
The South African shack dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo has planted gardens in a number of their affiliated settlements[8], such as the Kennedy Road settlement.

GuerrillaGardening.org
GuerrillaGardening.org was created in October 2004 by Richard Reynolds as a blog of his solo guerrilla gardening outside Perronet House, a neglected council block in London's Elephant and Castle district. At the time, his motivations were simply those of a frustrated gardener looking to beautify the neighborhood, but his website attracted the interest of fellow guerrilla gardeners in London and beyond, as well as the world's media. Reynolds's guerrilla gardening has now reached many pockets of South London, and news of his activity has inspired people around the world to get involved. He also works alongside other troops, some local and some who travel to participate. He has also guerrilla-gardened in Libya, Berlin and Montreal. Today, GuerrillaGardening.org is still his blog but also includes tips, links and thriving community boards where guerrilla gardeners from around the world are finding supportive locals. His book, On Guerrilla Gardening, which describes and discusses activity in 30 different countries, was published by Bloomsbury Publishing in the UK and USA in May 2008."Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto" by David Tracey has accounts of community garden leaders and public officials. "Guerrilla Gardening: How to Create Gorgeous Gardens for Free" by Barbara Pallenberg is a how-to on gardening that was "everything you wanted to know about gardening but were afraid to ask"

Early on Saturday, April 26, a team of volunteers installed forty-nine small birdhouses along the entire length of Hanover Avenue in the Fan District of Richmond, Virginia. They were built from untreated lumber and were specifically sized to provide a safe haven for some of Richmond's local songbirds, including wrens, blue birds, and finches, from the unwelcome non-native species such as the Starling and the European Barn Swallow.

Additionally, the guerrilla gardening movement has been catching on in Richmond, Virginia. In 2006, Style Weekly reported an act of guerrilla gardening in an alley off Hanover Avenue adjacent to the new birdhouses. Also, a group called Tricycle Gardens has begun the reclamation of blighted urban spaces in some of Richmond's poorest neighborhoods. Their efforts are bringing locally grown food and a better understanding of the interconnectedness humans have with nature to the city.

The volunteers who installed the birdhouses have asked members of the community to tend the houses in the fall once the breeding season is complete. The houses have been designed with a hinged right panel for easy cleaning.

Kew Bridge Eco Village, London, England
In July 2009 land rights activists moved on to a derelict piece of land near Kew Gardens in West London. Kew Bridge Eco Village is a small community of squatters who have grown vegetables and built basic wooden dwellings on the land.
Guerrilla gardening in Australia

Guerrilla gardening is prominent in Melbourne where most of the inner northern suburbs have community vegetable gardens; land adjoining rail lines has undergone regeneration of the native vegetation, including nature strips. There are a few minor disputes between guerrilla gardeners in Melbourne, with most falling into one of two groups: those concerned most with native planting and those concerned most with communal food growing. However, people with differing opinions still work together without dispute.[14]

There is a small community group in Melbourne called "Permablitz" who gather regularly to design and construct suburban vegetable gardens for free, in an effort to educate residents in Melbourne on how to grow their own food and better prepare them if/when food prices become too expensive.

Australian Network 10's show Guerrilla Gardeners featured a team of gardeners who make over areas of council owned property without them knowing.
--

Keith Johnson
"Be fruitful and mulch apply."
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