Guerrilla Gardening

Political activism has a long and vibrant history throughout the world. Across the ages people have involved themselves in campaigns, demonstrations, marches and outright civil disorder. Thankfully in Britain political activism rarely descends into the types of anarchy that you see in other parts of the globe like Iran and Guinea. Despite the UK governments attempt to curtail most forms of freedom of speech and the freedom to demonstrate, power to the people does still exist in this country as the recent demonstrations in London during the G20 shows. Protesting doesn’t always have to end in violence, Mahatma Ghandi and his dedication to peaceful non-cooperation showed the world that the methods of demonstrations used, are just as important as the message being portrayed. It is often said that violence begets more violence, and from everything we have experienced and seen, especially from the UK’s experience in Ireland, that is certainly true. The only way to break the cycle of revenge is too either eradicate one side of the argument, or to enact some kind of social and political reform like the British did by withdrawing from India.

Recently in the UK a new wave of political and social activism has begun to bloom across the country, quite literally in-fact. In the traditions of Ghandi’s peaceful activism, guerrilla gardening, a form of activism based upon ecology, the environment and permaculture, has sprung up across England and the British Isles in an effort to transform our dull city centres into vibrant botanical havens. The movement has been steadily growing throughout the last decade and hundreds of ‘cells’ now operate throughout the country. Late at night, throughout all seasons, hundreds of activists across the UK are out there literally ‘digging for Britain’. Guerrilla gardening involves the beautification of roadsides, roundabouts and unused council plots by planting shrubs and flowers. Groups or guerrilla gardeners exist in most major cities across the country, one particularly well known gardener, known as the human shrub, recently received national media attention due to his picketing of the Colchester town hall dressed entirely in moss.

As forms of activism go this one has got to be one of the greatest, and let’s face it one of the most peaceful forms of political and social expression.