It’s not often that a garden book urges you to ‘go to war’ but Get Guerrilla Gardening is different. Using seed bombs and trowels rather than explosives and guns, it is a guide to how to fight back against neglected urban spaces by turning them green.
I say urban but actually even rural towns often have areas that would benefit from plants. My own town has lots of street trees that would be even better with plants at their feet. This book shows how to go about reclaiming public spaces and introducing colour to help both wildlife and residents.
The handbook is the result of more than three years of guerrilla gardening by Ellen Miles, who took up the fight when attempts to green up her area of London were thwarted by council red tape.
Describing herself as a ‘botanical anarchist’, she admits to knowing nothing about gardening when she started. That doesn’t matter as there is a willing and knowledgeable community out there to help – the book has advice on how to find them.
The important distinction between gardening and guerrilla gardening is that the latter is growing in a shared public space without any municipal input – that’s why public parks don’t count. Instead, this green army works on derelict sites, neglected verges and abandoned planters.
Get Guerrilla Gardening is neatly divided into the ‘7 Ps’ – purpose, place, people, plan, parts, planting and protect – that cover every aspect from a run down of the law and a definition of what is a ‘public space’ to how to test soil for toxins and what tools you might need.
There are case studies from around the world, including the work of Tayshan Hayden-Smith following the Grenfell Tower disaster and the “paint and petals” transformation of Cork.
How to advice covers things such as turning an old bookcase into a vertical planter, using moss for graffiti, and making a seed shaker.
Colourful illustrations, lots of photos and small chunks of text make it an easy book to read while the language is engaging with frequent puns: “trowel and error”, “don’t be a one-trick peony”.
True to the nature of guerrilla gardening, the book, we’re told, is a guide not a set of rules. Ellen, who founded social enterprise Dream Green, describes it as “the manual I wish had existed when I was getting started”. And rather than merely ‘breaking the rules’, she wants to end them.
“We envisage a world free from authoritarian restrictions on who has a right to grow, in which public spaces are treated as commons, and everyone is allowed (and encouraged) to participate in shaping their environment.”
Get Guerrilla Gardening by Ellen Miles is published by DK with an RRP of £18.99. You can buy it here for £16.89. (If you buy via this link, I receive a small commission. The price you pay is not affected.) Alternatively, you may wish to buy from an independent bookseller here. All prices correct at time of publication of this post.
Enjoyed this? You can read more of my gardening and garden-related book reviews here.
Make sure you don’t miss future posts by signing up for an email alert.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2023 Mandy Bradshaw