Nicola's Blog

History
The earliest record of the term guerrilla gardening being used was by Liz Christy and her Green Guerrilla group in 1973 in the Bowery Houston area of New York. They transformed a derelict private lot into a garden.The space is still cared for by volunteers but now enjoys the protection of the city's parks department. Guerrilla gardening of this form—that is gardening on someone else's land without permission—has been around for centuries; there is even a reference to it in the Bible.Two celebrated guerrilla gardeners, active prior to the coining of the term, of in 1649 in 1801. Some would consider the latter, John Chapman, not to be a guerrilla gardener, as he was planting orchards on untitled land.
Guerrilla gardening is happening all over the world. In Northern trees commonly grow along the 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 workers is illegally grew vegetables on the abandoned plantation land, rather than leave with the plantation's closure in 1995.
The term guerrilla gardening is applied by some quite loosely to describe different forms of radical gardening. This includes gardening as an entirely political gesture rather, than one with genuine horticultural ambition, such as the in 2000, when no long term garden was expected to take root. Guerrilla gardening has also been used by a number of writers to give a radical edge to their gardening books. One of these is a book titled Guerrilla Gardening, which was published in 1983 by John F. Adams, aimed at encouraging amateur gardeners to grow varieties that are not the result of corporate. Another was a book by Barbara Pallenberg called Guerrilla Gardening, which instructed how to make a garden on a small budget. The term bewildering has been used as a synonym for guerrilla gardening by Australian gardener Bob Crombie.
Guerrilla Gardening in Australia