Guerilla Gardening
Random Acts of Horticulture Sow Seeds of Love
As typical with human nature, I believe myself to be a source of great and wonderous things. My ideas are so unique and revolutionary, the world will never be the same. That instant of supreme satisfaction in the supremacy of my thought is an intoxicating and fleeting flash of power. The secret of the universe has been revealed, just to me.
Then I Google it and discover it has been discovered. That’s ok, for a milli-second, I had the world by the tail. And the power of that moment is taste enough to keep hunting for that next great idea. It’s in my head somewhere. I’ll find it. Stick with me and I will probably tell you about it.
My latest greatest idea that I discovered was pre-discovered post-self-revelation is Guerilla Gardening. I live in a 65-unit townhouse apartment complex. Straight out of the mid-80’s, this place would have been the ideal set for the 1986 reboot of Three’s Company with the pool/jacuzzi/patio area strategically located at the heart of the complex.
The now Fitness Room used to be the Pool Clubhouse if you know what I mean! Harold, a 30+ year resident, hula-girl-tattooed Navy vet and old timer of 93 years, informs me that the pool parties back in the day were legend!
Property management removed over a dozen huge old Eucalyptus trees over the past few years. This was prompted by a massive wind storm that brought down four trees on the property. One branch crushed the neighbors little Corolla like a pancake.
After grinding out some of the stumps, the patches of dirt and sawdust left behind became mini-wastelands of flotsam and jetsam blown in by the Santa Anas. Those ugly weeds with the spiny stalks started growing and I ignored the admonitions from The Wife to stop acting like a crazy old dude. I pulled the weeds.
They left some of the stumps in the ground, and I had an over-supply of succulent-cuttings from my brother’s awesome desert garden one weekend, so I potted them up and placed one on each stump. Codenamed succulent subterfuge, that was my first Guerilla Gardening mission, right at the start of the lockdowns.
Now stretched past the year mark, those little pots of succulents have bloomed twice and are providing a fresh source of cuttings. Neighbors are encouraged to add their over-supply of clippings and to take some of plants they don’t have. It seems to be a healthy symbiotic relationship.
So, upon realizing that I had stumbled upon a marvelous niche-hobby or obsession, I obsessed all in on seeing what other median militias were up to. I happened upon perhaps the most famous Gangsta Gardener Ron Finley from South Central LA. I watched his TED Talk today. I plan on getting to one of his garden outings soon. I love his tag line
“just plant shit”
It is an amazing feeling watching someone say things I have believed in for most of my life. His take on food and kids is mandatory viewing for all parents. Gardening is more than a metaphor for life. Gardening is life. Along with Animal Husbandry, Gardening has been a constant and grounding (pun intended) life-long activity and experience for me.
Fin, as they call him, spoke to my soul when he talked about humans beings as the soil in God’s Garden. Barren soil bears no fruit. Soil, like human souls, must be cultivated and maintained to be sustained. He jokes that the “funny thing about sustainability is that it has to be sustained.” Some of us are good at sustainability but bad at sustaining.
Think about it. How many fruits and vegetables do you eat daily? Today? Were fruits and vegetables readily available in your youth? Did you garden? Do you garden now? With your kids, so they eat vegetables? In this case, familiarity increases acceptance. It doesn’t breed contempt. A kid that grows up eating kale and tomatoes is likely an adult that does the same.
In typical fact-ignorant style, the LA City Code Enforcement saw a major infraction committed by the Servient Tenant – the homeowner legally obligated to maintain the verge – against the Dominant Tenant - the city who all but ignored the strip until it could coerce a citizen into coughing up hard earned money to pay a ridiculous fine for improving it. Tax dollars at work!
The red-tape endangered the greenbelt. Growing a garden that gave free food to disadvantaged communities, including the “unhoused ” and “POC” took Steve Lopez of the LA Times to write a piece and get a councilman involved.
Of course when the wind blew that way, the politicians decided they liked gardens too. Poll tested of course, having never actually worked in a garden as a person. I guess it is their expertise with cow manure. The logic from the city was incomprehensible for it’s utter cognitive dissonance.
As for the permit, those begin at $400. And the city’s “residential parkway landscaping guideline,” which Nishida dug up, says that even with a permit, plants must be drought-resistant and no taller than 36 inches.
In other words, you can plant turf and pour untold gallons of water into keeping it green, as thousands do in our state, despite its history of water shortages. But heaven forbid you plant fruits and vegetables that require less water and actually feed people. And in Finley’s case, he collects rainwater in drums and uses it to irrigate his garden well into the summer.
Fin’s efforts have been replicated, and he has a whole bunch of amazing plans to empower a bunch of people. By Guerilla Gardening. What a worthy cause to donate to.
So, after finding out that this stealthy Johnny Appleseeding on my part actually does have a name and is a thing, I am more pumped up about it than before. Here I am, creating useful and beautiful things out of found wood. I am the real-life dork in the Progressive commercial asking, “Who just gives away wood?”
Some of the mission-specific assignments I have completed include planting wildflowers and succulents in dead zones, slipping the actual gardeners a 12-pack to do some out-of-their-lane work, and building birdhouses. Some of the effects of battle are obvious, such as talking to the birds and dumpster-diving! I won’t mention what The Wife calls it.
I am happy to observe and report the results. I have created three zones so far, the first zone started with the removal of a tree that was probably 60-70 feet high literally at our back gate. It was the messiest tree on earth! It littered our patio all four seasons in So Cal: Hot; Windy; Shaky; Fiery. The removal left a pile of dirt and sawdust that the seasons again saw fit to disturb and deposit on the patio. Something had to be done.
Three bags of bark, two bags of wildflower seeds, and one found-object wrought iron thingy spray-painted red and topped with a succulent bowl to add some color and focus while the seeds took forever to sprout. Again that patience deficiency thing. Another beer-bribe for the gardeners to not weed-whip the seedlings.
Purple Cosmos and yellow Coneflowers competed with pink and white Alyssum and blue Bachelor Buttons to create a rainbow-colored-pollen-buffet for our winged friends upon first blossoming. Just past its second bloom, new contestants included yellow and orange Wild Poppies and burgundy and gold Mexican Hats.
Hardscape improvements followed. My first birdhouse sits proudly atop a natural tree trunk and stump-base. Rock sculptures make perfect lizard sun-bathing decks. An inverted terra cotta pot spray-painted red, white, and blue is a natural bird-bath. A pair of doves have adopted the space as their own.
In fact, it has become such a bird sanctuary that passers-by are startled by the thunder of wing-claps when the equally-spooked birds take flight all at once. There is an actual crazy old dude next door, whose backyard I am granted visual access to via the window in my 2nd floor WFH office, who has over a half-dozen bird feeders. The Wife calls him my future-self.
Between his sanctuary and mine, the birds are ruling the roost. I know, pardon me. Speaking of dumpster-diving, the next two sectors were supplied with repurposed and upcycled objects abandoned next to the dumpster. I made that perfectly clear to The Wife. Next to is the same as above the rim, still utilizing the Costanza Rule.
The Neighbor who is super sweet alerted me to the dumpster treasures, as she provides dependable and needed reconnoiter services in the complex for future guerilla missions. The Cal Trans Neighbor and The Subway Construction Foreman Neighbor have each made successful pallet and other reclaimed wood resupply efforts.
I am glad I discovered that I didn’t discover this, only because I hope that I have discovered Guerilla Gardening for you. This is an on-going project and I will update with any new missions!
Ric
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After feeling tossed around on the tsunami of stress caused by a societal earthquake, the dawn is cracking through the stormy sky.
After riding our individual lifeboats in that unending sea of confusion, we are seeing silhouettes of souls such as us. We are gathering our boats together, and flexing the new talents and skills survival forced us to learn.
Let’s keep then, the strength of our individual resolve, and resolve to keep our community strength.
It is not worth defeating the enemy if the enemy is us.