Somewhere in your city, several renegade environmentalists are huddling around a dimly lit kitchen table drawing out their latest offensive. They make a few phone calls and send out a couple of emails before they grab their shovels and march downstairs into the dark city streets. They call themselves guerilla gardeners and, today, they will be defacing another drab city sidewalk with bright yellow sunflowers and lovely purple lavender.

Guerrilla gardening, a tradition that can be traced back to the late 18th century, consists of people planting crops, flowers and shrubs on land that does not belong to them. At its core, it is a direct action political statement intricately tied to land reform and land rights. However, it has been making a significant comeback in recent years, according to prominent guerilla gardener Richard Reynolds. Why? Well, because it is simply a fun way to spend an evening.

We here at Alternative Channel have become increasingly intrigued by this blossoming movement. So, we tracked down Richard Reynolds in his London office to find out, why he does what he does, what is behind the movement’s growing popularity, and what are some of the problems guerrilla gardeners face.

AC: So, for all of us that are not familiar with Guerilla Gardening, what is it about?

RR: It’s about gardening wherever you want regardless of who owns the land. It’s about getting out there and doing it and expressing yourself in a public place. In a place where the land is not being done anything with. It’s not until the last four years that it has caught on because people like myself have been blogging about it and writing about it and talking about it and making short movies about it.

AC: Why do you think Guerilla Gardening has been gaining in popularity?

RR: People want to keep in touch with the land around them. More people are getting the sense that we need to get a little closer to nature again. More people are living in cities. So they don’t have their own garden space. That is how I came to be doing it. Because I moved to London and I had no garden. Not even a window sill, for the first time in my life. But I also got involved for the sense of community. If you’re doing something in public that is generally seen as pretty positive, you are going to meet people. That is the social side of it.

AC: So you have collaborators?

RR: Yes, I do it with others (laughter). These days some of my best friends are from guerilla gardening. And, some of my older friends, who aren’t really gardeners, come on the journey with me.

AC: Watching your video, I noticed you spend a lot of money on this.

RR: Sometimes. Yep. But by no mean does it have to cost that much. It depends on how impatient you are. And there are times when I’m quit impatient. And I want to do something that is really obvious and that means buying plants. But you don’t, by any means, need to spend a lot.

May 1st, for four years now, has been the international sunflower guerilla gardening day. Which is an idea some guerilla gardeners in Brussels conceived. And that’s just about planting a few sunflower seeds around the city.
And, if you get word out people give you stuff as well. Gardeners chuck stuff out and people chuck stuff out of their gardens. They feel guilty about it, so if they can find some positive way to direct it then...

AC: When you have to spend money, do you pay for everything out of your own pocket?

RR: Yes. Or there is a little bit of fundraising going on.

AC: What kind of fund raising?

RR: We sell lavender. Some of the lavender that we planted in the guerilla garden, which you can see on some of the online films, we chop up about once a year anyway, and stuff goes into pillows. And that raises lots of money because we sell them at an extortionary price (laughter).

AC: Have you ever had any mishaps when guerilla gardening?

RR: There is an online film showing one of my many encounters with police. It is the only one, actually, where I was threatened with arrest. I have a video of it online. It’s quite hammy. It’s quite a bit hyped up to be dramatic, because it was being done for Swedish children’s TV. They didn’t really appreciate that, actually. There was no need to film it like it was some spy movie, because the drama is there anyway.

AC: So that was the only time?

RR: Yes. That’s when it got difficult and I got angry. Normally when the police realize, after brief questioning, that we are not really destroying stuff, they just let us get on with it and turn a blind eye. The wide spread attitude is tolerance. Sometimes we will try to provoke a political reaction, by planting larger plants. Quiet tolerance is usually the response. However, for virtually every guerilla gardener I’ve met, the political objective is secondary to the fun and pleasure of doing it.