Someone has declared tomorrow, October 9, 2010 as International Tulip Guerrilla Gardening Day. [ Here’s the Facebook event. ] I won’t be discussing tulips, but this post does have a few things to say about guerrilla gardening.
If you’re not up on seed bombs here’s a little background: The idea of rolling up seeds and clay to make little balls that could be lobbed into an area to sow the seeds probably goes back centuries. But the technique was revitalized in Japan by Masanobu Fukuoka during the last century as part of a low-disturbance style of planting. Instead of tilling the ground, these lumps of seed and clay could be spread out on the earth’s surface, reducing ground disturbance and the resulting need to weed so intensely. Up to that point the little round seed delivery devices were known as seed balls, earth balls or even clay dumplings.
With the rise of the militant guerrilla gardening movement, the little seed ball became one of the weapons of choice against what was perceived as urban blight. An untended vacant lot could be showered with with these little projectiles, and a few good rains could see the seeds sprouting and taking over what might have been invasive weeds. In the testosterone-soaked guerrilla garden movement the friendly seed ball quickly became rebranded a “seed bomb.”
Now we return to current times and the article I started out mentioning: The original cut of the article touted how these particular seed bombs contained native species, including–cue the scary music–sweet alyssum! While the definitely-not-native sweet alyssum isn’t one of the top two or three most invasive plants, it’s undisputedly a problem and has no business in a seed ball that could get hurled into an wild area by a well-meaning guerrilla gardener. In my own garden, a sowing of the stuff twenty years ago has led to a situation of seedlings still popping up every time it rains.
The article generated all sorts of comments, and several people wrote directly to the maker of these particular seed bombs mentioned in the paper, Jim Mumford of GreenScaped Buildings. One thing led to another and it was revealed that the newspaper got hold of a bad list of ingredients, and that sweet alyssum had never been a part of the mix. The newspaper ran a sidebar correction to the story. (The species used to me looks like the California native wildflower mix offered by S&S Seeds.)
Still by that point the damage had been done, and the creator of these particular balls felt like he needed to show up last month at the lion’s den of the the native plant society meeting to do some damage control. He brought us all a big bag of free seed balls. He ran down the real list of species that were really in the mix. He reiterated that sweet alyssum had never been part of the mix.
When it was all over, several in the audience were saying they had no trouble with the species used to make the seed balls. The plants were all from California and weren’t considered invasive. But this was a tough crowd to please and there were still a few lingering concerns.
Within the state there are distinct forms of many of the plants in the mix, and each region’s flora has a particular balance of local plants. If you bring in a non-local strain of a “native” plant you might do something to mess up that balance. Really the only way to make a safe seed bomb that you might lob into a wild area would be to use seed from local plants. Seed bombs are fun, but keep them confined to urban gardens away from wildlands and don’t go tossing the balls into your neighborhood canyon thinking you’re doing the earth a favor.
The story of the San Diego seed bombs has a relatively happy ending. But over the last couple of months I’ve run across a seller who offers “West Coast seed bombs” on Etsy and through a number of boutiques. The vendor lists the ingredients as “Cornflower, Siberian Wallflower, Garland Chrysanthemum, Shasta Daisy, Farewell-to-Spring, Plains Coreopsis, Sulphur Cosmos, Wild Cosmos, African Daisy, Sweet William, California Poppy, Blanket Flower, Baby’s Breath, Tidy Tips, Mountain Phlox, Blue Flax, Sweet Alyssum, Annual Lupine, Lemon Mint, Red Poppy, Rocky Mountain Penstemon, Desert Bluebell, Mexican Hat, Gloriosa Daisy, None-so-Pretty, Prairie Coneflower, and Black-eyed Susan.” Not only does this mix include sweet alyssum, it contains garland chrysanthemum, one of our local scourges. Some parts of the country also have problems with the baby’s breath.
The issue of invasives aside, it makes me wonder about people’s definitions of what constitutes a wildflower. Siberian wallflower on the West Coast? African daisy?
I got in touch with the makers of these seed bombs, and they were quite responsive, saying “we are continually developing this product. Your feedback will help inform our product going forward and is much appreciated. We will gladly include information about the danger of invasive species in our product from here forward.” And they asked for suggestions for plants that would be better citizens in a West Coast wildflower mix. Off the top of my head I referred them to the list accompanying the article, and added just a few ideas of California natives not on the list: baby blue eyes, fivespot, coast sunflower, desert marigold. What others would you recommend?
If the makers of these seed balls drastically change their mix we could have another relatively happy ending. Most of us probably have non-native plants in our gardens. If what happens in the garden stays in the garden, then it’s not quite a doom and gloom scenario. But we definitely have a problem if people start throwing seed bombs into the wilds.
In this case, accompanying the seed balls with a note about the potential threat of invasive plants could do as much good as reformulating the mix.
Last week I was leaving the library and overheard three athletic young men outside having a discussion. One of them said one of the following sentences:
“Great game last night!”
“I’m tired of studying, lets get some brews.”
“Dude, I just love the way jasmine smells!
If you picked the last one, you would be correct. I guess I was a little surprised at what was the subject of conversation among three college jocks.
The library entrance is flanked by two planters full of jasmine that are situated high over the walkway. When the jasmine blooms, there’s no missing the aroma.
I took the stairs up to the level of the beds last week. There, I was surprised to find that one of the planters contains a little more than jasmine. To my eyes it looks like someone has staged a little guerrilla gardening operation: Poking through the monoculture of the flowering vines were little plants of yarrow, gaura, a pink-flowered mint relative (anyone know what this is from the photo?), and something else not in bloom that I can’t identity in its green, leafy state. The bed on the other side is just plain jasmine, as it’s been for the last 18 years. If this were officially sanctioned landscaping, they would have made the planting symmetrical and introduced these little plants on the other side.
The house behind us has a back fence that is about fifteen feet behind our rear fence. Between the two is a no-man’s-land of unmaintained iceplant, ivy and whatever else has escaped from the adjacent gardens. In some neighborhoods this might be the location for a back alley. But with lot of the back house rising six feet over ours, the land is too sloped to accommodate much more than a narrow concrete culvert to drain the slope behind us and keep the infrequent rains from inundating all of us below.
A view of the Back 40
We have a gate that leads into this space of ambiguous ownership, but I’d never spent much time back there until a recent project to repair the fence.
I looked with contempt at the thick mat of iceplant. Botanical shag carpeting, I thought. Every ignored space in town is covered with it. It does next to nothing to provide habitat for the local fauna. Although it’s often planted to stabilize a slope, its weight can actually pull the slope down more than hold it in place. Yes, it’s very drought-tolerant, and it’s serviceable in some situations. But the plant for me usually represents a colossal failure of the imagination. We can do better than this.
I just happened to have two pots of seedlings of the native sacred datura, a.k.a. toloache, a.k.a. Datura wrightii. The plant easily grows six or more feet across, and I realistically had no space for it in the garden around the house. The lightbulb over my head came on.
One of the daturas planted in the back 40
It’s amazing what ten minutes with a trowel, a watering can and two pots of plants can accomplish. In this second photo, lower right, is one of the datura seedlings that I inserted into the thatch under the iceplant.
I must admit that after planting them I forgot to water them for almost a week of dry weather well into the eighties. Expecting to see carnage, I was surprised to instead see the plants looking at least as happy as they were in their seed pots. I gave them another drink of water, but that may be all they’ll require from here on out. Starting next spring, I’m hoping to bee able to see their amazing morning-glory flowers from my deck, unfurling at dusk to greet the night.
From my last walk in the local wilds I came home with a napkin folded around the seeds of another plant I previously didn’t have room for. I’m thrilled. I’ve got a whole new plot to garden.
A topic that’s making its rounds these days is the practice of guerrilla gardening.
It can take different forms, but what’s being talked about most are “seed bombing” and stealthily taking over neglected public spaces.
Richard Reynolds in London has just released a book, On Guerrilla Gardening, and that’s causing a lot of the buzz. The hiply “criminal” nature of what he’s doing has given Reynolds a certain aura. Even Adidas is trying to tap into it with a proposal for an advertising campaign. Think of the “edgy” caché that Shepard Fairey developed with his “Obey” campaign of guerrilla-applied posters featuring Andre the Giant. In addition to now doing signage for the Obama campaign, Fairey has taken that celebrity and channeled into an art and marketing career. Reynolds is poised to do something similar.
In addition to London the practice is happening all over: Berlin, New York, Long Beach in California–lots of places. In Long Beach, for instance, someone recently named in an article only as “Scott” has been beautifying neglected traffic medians by planting them with attractive landscaping. What’s really to his credit is that he weeds and otherwise maintains the spaces, and he’s been doing this for ten years, more than twice as long as Reynolds.
In the same article, Ramon Arevalo, Superintendent of Grounds Maintenance for Long Beach, has said that he has no problem with “Scott’s” illegal activity. “If you want to do this, my advice is to contact myself or the council person. We want to partner with people who care about where they live.”
That sounds like the seed bomb for a whole new program cities could develop. Why not partner people who want to grow living things with governments in possession of butt-ugly patches of untended land?
Here in San Diego there are several beautification programs in and around the city where artists are invited to decorate the mundane electrical utitility boxes that populate street corners and front yards. Hundreds of boxes have sported interesting new paintjobs as a result. Why not do something similar with those dead zones spread throughout most cities by getting people to participate in beautifying their surroundings by planting gardens in neglected spaces?
And–here’s a radical idea–why not pay them something to do it?!
While the definitely-not-native sweet alyssum isn’t one of the top two or three most invasive plants, it’s undisputedly a problem and has no business in a seed ball that could get hurled into an wild area by a well-meaning guerrilla gardener. In my own garden, a sowing of the stuff twenty years ago has led to a situation of seedlings still popping up every time it rains.
