It should not be so hard to write both poetry and fiction. Both arts, after all, make use of the same materials, words and punctuation. Poems...
Continue »
Hi it's the author here. In response to the reader who asks about my lack of windowsills... well I really don't have any! It's sad but true. I'm in a ten-storey 1970s tower block and in hindsight moving there was a dumb idea because I really missed tending plants... I'd always had at least windowsills before living in London. The solution seemed obvious to me. There was no need to move, I loved everything else about my home and there was opportunity all around me right on the door step (all be it down a lift first). The need for care of the neglected public planters solved my itch and after starting there grotty patches of public land never looked quite the same again (by which I mean they became potential gardens). It's just a pity it requires guerrilla tactics to do it. Three years on I now have permission from the council but they said had I asked first they would never have permitted my activity. It's just a lot more difficult to say no in the face of blooming flowers and happy residents... and that's why guerrilla gardening is a great strategy to transform land on your terms.
I've gardened since I was a kid, I was head gardener at school aged 13 and I weeded organic strawberries by hand for a holiday job when I was fifteen. Having guerrilla gardened for four years now I really don't see the need for a private garden of my own. Doing it in public is just so much more fun. And this book tells the tale of many many others around the world and in the US doing it too, for all sorts of different reasons.
As for those windowsills, well this year I was brave enough to make use of my high rise facade. There's a bit of concrete that sticks out beneath my flat with a small concrete wall around it (this is a hard-to-describe architectural oddity, a weird sort of flat roof thing but best picture it as a shallow coffin and planting it like doing so from the top of the grave). I've dropped some buckets of compost and sunflower seeds into it and a six weeks in all is going well. I'll post pictures of it on the website (GuerrillaGardening.org) later in the year. But this experiment doesn't let me get my hands dirty and enjoy regular gardening, and so I'd encourage anyone with this peculiar high rise opportunity or a plain old windowsill to do that but also get out there and start transforming more territory... or at least get some inspiration and cheer from those who do and read my book!
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(11 of 11 readers found this comment helpful)
Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.
Don't Miss
Customer Comments
Richard Reynolds has commented on (1) product.
On Guerrilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening without Boundaries by Richard Reynolds
Richard Reynolds, May 27, 2008
Hi it's the author here. In response to the reader who asks about my lack of windowsills... well I really don't have any! It's sad but true. I'm in a ten-storey 1970s tower block and in hindsight moving there was a dumb idea because I really missed tending plants... I'd always had at least windowsills before living in London. The solution seemed obvious to me. There was no need to move, I loved everything else about my home and there was opportunity all around me right on the door step (all be it down a lift first). The need for care of the neglected public planters solved my itch and after starting there grotty patches of public land never looked quite the same again (by which I mean they became potential gardens). It's just a pity it requires guerrilla tactics to do it. Three years on I now have permission from the council but they said had I asked first they would never have permitted my activity. It's just a lot more difficult to say no in the face of blooming flowers and happy residents... and that's why guerrilla gardening is a great strategy to transform land on your terms.I've gardened since I was a kid, I was head gardener at school aged 13 and I weeded organic strawberries by hand for a holiday job when I was fifteen. Having guerrilla gardened for four years now I really don't see the need for a private garden of my own. Doing it in public is just so much more fun. And this book tells the tale of many many others around the world and in the US doing it too, for all sorts of different reasons.
As for those windowsills, well this year I was brave enough to make use of my high rise facade. There's a bit of concrete that sticks out beneath my flat with a small concrete wall around it (this is a hard-to-describe architectural oddity, a weird sort of flat roof thing but best picture it as a shallow coffin and planting it like doing so from the top of the grave). I've dropped some buckets of compost and sunflower seeds into it and a six weeks in all is going well. I'll post pictures of it on the website (GuerrillaGardening.org) later in the year. But this experiment doesn't let me get my hands dirty and enjoy regular gardening, and so I'd encourage anyone with this peculiar high rise opportunity or a plain old windowsill to do that but also get out there and start transforming more territory... or at least get some inspiration and cheer from those who do and read my book!
(11 of 11 readers found this comment helpful)