Week of April 16, 2009, Issue #704
FRONT
Guerrillas in our midst
Green-thumbed revolutionaries gear up for another year of subversive gardening
Scott Harris / scott@vueweekly.com
By the time I arrive at Dustin Bajer's small southside apartment, most of the first wave of his comrades-in-plantings have already come and gone, and those who remain are relaxing and discussing plans for the upcoming season while they wait for others to arrive.
Somewhat appropriately, given that it's the de facto headquarters of the burgeoning Edmonton Guerrilla Gardeners, Bajer's apartment has the vague feel of a clandestine urban laboratory belonging to an underground revolutionary cell, albeit with a twist. Dozens of packets of seeds, giant bags of dirt and seeding trays are sprawled around the floor of the apartment, and the conversation drifts to plans for the building of some improvised explosive devices—seed bombs—with whatever is left over at the end of the evening, an informal seed-sharing event to kick off the new season of green guerrilla activity in the city.
Started on the spur of the moment last May by Bajer and a few friends, the Edmonton Guerrilla Gardeners are the local branch of an informal international movement that brings together gardening, direct action and concerns over issues of urban sustainability and food security to challenge notions of how public space in the city is used.
With roots stretching back to 17th century English agrarian activists the Diggers, the modern movement began in New York City in 1973, when a group called the Green Guerrillas, led by activist Liz Christy, illegally transformed an abandoned city lot into an urban garden.
Similar groups have since taken root in dozens of cities in North America and Europe, undertaking everything from clandestine midnight plantings on public land to establishing community gardens, at times pushing the boundaries of legality in order to bring a greater sense of place to the city while making the urban landscape more inviting and sustainable.
"I think that historically people have had a connection with the land, and redefining the way we use land is just trying to bring back that connection with the place that we live," explains Bajer. "We often, especially people who live in the city, we think of humankind as a separate thing from nature. People think of the city as its own isolated pocket that's not connected with the rest of the world, but even on the land that we [Edmontonians] live on now we're tied to our environment. I think guerrilla gardening is just a way of honouring that or admitting that or getting closer to that. So I think for a lot of people who don't have yards, who don't have a space to garden, it's a way to feel closer to the place in which they live. It's a way of tying themselves back to land, back to their community and I think that ultimately that's what it's about."
Like most guerrilla gardening groups around the world, some of the Edmonton group's activities do push the envelope of legality, something Bajer says he's grown more comfortable with since last year.
"It's a fine line. We are going out there without permission and planting things, but ultimately the goal is to benefit the city, to benefit the people that live in these communities, to benefit the environment through increased biodiversity, to cheer people up," Bajer says. "We're not out there to do any damage, we're not trying to plant trees where there's underground infrastructure, trees that can block views of traffic or something like that. So we're trying to be pretty careful where we choose to plant."
If the growth of the group is any indication, there are plenty of Edmontonians who are equally comfortable with the guerrilla approach. From the handful of friends who started last spring, the group has grown to include a core of about 25 regulars and more than 300 other part-time guerrillas who stay connected either through the Facebook group or email list. While most of the members are still university students and recent graduates, Bajer says the group is starting to become more diverse.
"Most people are pretty receptive to guerrilla gardening once they explore it and start talking to us about it," Bajer says. "Just in the last year I can't believe how many connections I've made, different groups and organizations and people I've met. It's networking, it's social, it's a community thing. It's getting out there and feeling like you're actively doing something in the community. There's so many people who want to do something and they say, 'Oh, wouldn't it be great if ... ' and this is an opportunity to actually go out there and to do something, to see it in real, tangible terms."
Despite some setbacks in its first season—some of the group's public plantings were uprooted, likely ending up in home gardens, while others fell victim to municipal weed eaters and lawnmowers—Bajer says the group has ambitious plans for the coming season.
They recently received a donation of more than a thousand seeds of native plants from Sangudo-based Bedrock Seeds, many of which are now being propagated by members of the group in preparation for mass plantings later in the spring, and they've already been contacted by two community leagues in the city asking for help in improving the biodiversity in their communities.
The Guerrilla Gardeners are also hooking up with the Edmonton Naturalization Group to continue work on a native plant garden they started last year in a garbage-strewn abandoned lot overrun with invasive species in Mill Creek Ravine, which Bajer hopes can someday be transformed into a permaculture-based edible food garden.
An equally ambitious plan is to create an online green map of the city to identify sources of publicly available food, such as saskatoon berries in the river valley or chokecherry trees on neighbourhood streets, and provide GPS coordinates and addresses of their locations. Bajer also hopes to eventually include private sources of available urban food: "Let's say someone has an apple tree in their backyard and they just let the apples fall every year and they're interested in giving it away—they could post their apple tree on the map and advertise it kind of like a Kijiji, but for free, available food. Kind of a food surplus map."
Generally, says Bajer, the group now has the experience and confidence to tackle more ambitious projects.
"I think we went into it last year with a lot of enthusiasm and I don't think we've lost that enthusiasm, but we've learned a lot from last year, we've made more connections, we have some bigger projects lined up. We'd like to do once a month something that's a fairly substantial planting; we'd really like this year for somebody to walk around a corner and say, 'What happened here last night? This looks a lot better than it did 24 hours ago.' We'd like to concentrate on really good, publicly visible projects."
And, says Bajer, there's no shortage of places to choose from in a city like ours.
"Edmonton is a really sprawling city, which I think a lot of people chalk up as a very negative thing—and it definitely does have it's negative aspects—but at the same time, when you start thinking about guerrilla gardening, when you start thinking about using public spaces in different ways, you notice how much public space we have. It's really incredible how much empty space is in this city." V
Connect with the Edmonton Guerrilla Gardeners at edmontongg.blogspot.com, by email at theurbangreening@gmail.com or search Facebook for Edmonton Guerrilla Gardeners.
Social Bookmarking
Got something to say? Send a letter to the editor.
letters@vueweekly.com