The Controversy Over Guerrilla Gardening

It’s a familiar sight to any urban city dweller. Vacant lots, abandoned commercial areas, and those random strips of land in between sidewalk and road. Usually bare, brown dirt or overrun with weeds. Who could disagree that a city looks better and happier with a lush little bit of landscaping in that place instead?

Taking a cue from Johnny Appleseed, hobbyist gardeners are throwing a few seeds around to revitalize these orphaned patches of land. First there’s Guerrilla Gardening, a blog urging readers to “pimp your pavement” through the use of “seed bombs.” According to WebEcoist, a typical seed bomb might be “a condom filled with fertilizer, water and wildflower seeds.” Imagine explaining this to your mother when she catches you making them in the kitchen sink.

It’s taking England by storm, even to the point of tending graveyards.

But, as noted by The Huffington Post, this really is illegal! In some cases it’s private property, and in others it’s just one of those gray areas where it’s a strip of public land that nobody’s going to care about… until somebody starts taking care of it, at which point it becomes a point of liability, or unauthorized use of government land, or something.