Plots and plans: Guerrilla gardeners just want to make the world greener

Published on Friday 27 November 2009 16:14

MOST of us probably pass unused patches of land on a daily basis – an overgrown area by a roadside, or a larger swathe of underdeveloped ground. Every time you see such a thing, you think: what a waste, before walking on.

Not many of us, however, would be proactive or green-fingered enough to think about actually trying to beautify that bit of redundant space. Luckily for us Glasgow Guerrilla Gardeners, who boast the battle cry "resistance is fertile", aren't so defeatist. The organisation was founded last year by Jennifer Calder, a 34-year-old advice worker at a regeneration agency. Before she set up the group, which has around 100 members subscribing to a mailing list (and a hardcore planting group of around five, she was confined to a tenement flat and, therefore, limited when it came to pursuing her love of gardening.

She decided to satisfy her horticultural urges by tackling an empty plot near her house and, now Calder and her small band of volunteers have waved their green wand over a few areas of municipal land in Glasgow – most notably a large, council-owned area at Townhead. "Before we got to work there, it was badly overgrown," says Calder. "But when we started to cut it back, we found that there were old rose bushes and that it was once a maintained piece of ground which had been forgotten about."

This "secret garden" is an ongoing project for the team, as well as being the main site for their biggest mission to date – a commitment to plant 10,000 bulbs (with a few hundred of those going elsewhere in Glasgow city centre), before 31 December this year.

"Because we rely on donations of plants or very small amounts of cash we're doing this to try to co-ordinate our work," explains Calder. "We can't make a huge impact if we're just planting a few things here and there. Plus, we wanted to have something that was quite sustainable, because bulbs will come back into bloom annually."

So far, their plan has gone well, with around 7,500 mixed bulbs in the ground. That is, despite the fact that, after writing to various companies to ask for support, they've received no donations to their scheme. Unfortunately, this has meant that Calder and a couple of others on the team have had to put their own money into the project and have ended up with a surplus of daffodils (which are the easiest and cheapest to buy in bulk), but a shortage of other varieties.

"We also want to get hold of some English bluebells, wood anemone and things like that, which are a bit more specialist, and we're struggling a bit with them," Calder says.

Other items on their shopping list include grape hyacinths, snakehead fritillaries, tulips, snowdrops, alliums, aconites and crocuses. All of these were selected for their ability to naturalise in the area and for the benefits they'll bring to local wildlife (apart from, according to Calder, the tulips, which are "there to look nice and little else").

Once these beautifully monikered bulbs are begged, borrowed and planted, eventually to pop out of the ground in spring 2010, the Glasgow Guerrilla Gardeners will then be responsible for maintaining them. This can be especially tricky as, after bitter experience, Calder knows that flora and fauna can be at risk of disappearing overnight.

"You have to take into account that a lot of plants have a tendency to get stolen, so we're quite wary of planting anything too flashy," she explains. "Last year I got all these beautiful painted heathers and made this lovely border with them and they only lasted two or three days. You have to constantly think; 'if I was the sort of person who went around stealing plants, what would I go for?'"

There can also be problems with vandalism and the gardening team occasionally find plants that have been trampled on or uprooted. However, these are probably untargeted acts, as the support for what the Glasgow Guerrilla Gardeners do is generally very positive in the community – even Glasgow City Council has offered encouragement and support, with regards to their work at Townhead (which Calder eventually wants to fill with permanent shrubs and evergreens).

This is in contrast, somewhat, to what's happened to a similar organisation, the North Kelvin Meadow Campaign, which has been operating on a large piece of disused land that's been used as an unofficial dumping ground since the 1970s. Volunteers have cleared this area and, over the past 18 months, established a community garden, allotments and an orchard – to the chagrin of Glasgow City Council, which has earmarked this space for development. According to Calder, the volunteer gardeners on the North Kelvin Meadow Campaign site were recently summoned to court, with the council attempting to forcibly evict them from the land.

This seems like rather a strongarm approach for this type of group. After all, although they're, technically, doing something illegal, their only aim is to make the world a little greener.

As Calder says; "The name Glasgow Guerrilla Gardeners sounds scary, but we're actually pretty benign."

www.glasgowguerillagardening.org.uk