Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Theory of guerrilla gardening

Flowers blooming in a forgotten garden in Tickles

Guerrilla gardening is a form of environmental activism where activists take over a piece of abandoned land and grow crops on it, usually under cover of night. I think it can also be loosely applied to taking plants out of abandoned gardens and replant in ones own garden.

Last year near the end of June a group of us were kayak camping at Tickles in St. Mary's Bay, Newfoundland. Its an old resettled community and these flowers were growing there wild now that there was no one there to attend to it. I don't know what the name of the flowers is but obviously someone had taken care to grow them as a source of enjoyment because they aren't wildflowers, at least not here.

I liked them and even though I didn't know what they were I took a clump, put them in my kayak and planted them in my garden. A winter passed and when spring came I wondered if they would come back. Well, they did and judging by how early they're blooming, we must be almost a month ahead of the season compared to last year.

Tony :-)

And here it is growing almost a year later in my garden at home.

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