Guerilla Gardening

Well, I was going to do a post on winter warmers and lovely knitwear, but I've decided that spring is (or should be) just around the corner so a post on how to brighten up our urban spaces would encourage that spring sun to shine on us!

GuerillaGardening.org was started as a blog around 6 years ago and provides tips and information on how to get involved in illicit cultivation around your cities. 

This photo was found on the Aitoa Arkkitahtuuria, a Finnish blog (in English) with some great posts on 'Green Architecture'.

Photo from the Heavy Petal blog - a colourful US based blog about gardening, seeds and the great outdoors. 

Seed Bombs are a brilliant way to get started and you can buy them ready made, or make your own at home, check out this video at the Guardian online for your DIY instructions.  You just take a walk around the city and lob them into any spaces that look like they need a bit of greenery.

This is technically a Seed Ball, as pictured and described on the Heavy Petal Blog here, but a Seed Bomb is exactly the same thing, you just happen to throw it into spaces which are not your garden.

Another guerilla gardening tool is moss grafitti, you can see the Heavy Petal post on this here, including a recipe for making your moss starter.  This is a photo of someone embellishing someone else's work!

If we're talking about graffiti then I have to post some photos of one of my favourite kinds.

Photo courtesy of cherryflava

Photos courtesy of craftism blog (this blog has some really interesting posts - the author is doing a thesis on the relationship between design and vernacular craft and posts about her research so far)

For more projects going on within visual resistance, check out the Just Seeds website, they are a US based Visual Resistance Artists' Cooperative, you can read about their projects here, including drawing resistance and the God Bless Graffiti Coalition.

Ofcourse, if this post is going to finish on a note of visual resistance, I should ofcourse provide a link to the greatest of them all, Banksy.  I lived in Bristol for five years at the time when Banksy was getting well known but not quite the global recognition he has now, I LOVE his work and seeing it around my favourite city was always a joy. I have in my possession several of his books, and the dialogue that accompanies the artwork is inspiring, insightful and full of political humour and common sense, check them out from your local independent bookstore!