How to get started on your guerilla garden

If you want to find your inner guerrilla gardener, try this advice from gardening veterans Kelda Miller and Tom McGuire.




Garden where you are: If you're renting, ask the landlord if you can contribute to the garden's upkeep, and maybe offer produce in return. Ask if you can garden at work. Explain why you're doing what you're doing (building up soil, growing food, stopping weeds, etc.) And, says Miller, "start small so you can maintain it."

Build beds: Beds work on any kind of surface, even concrete. Use tough-rooted plants like horsetail, dandelion, burdock and buddleia to break up concrete, then layer on mulch to fight weeds and build up soil. One guerrilla gardener even laid a whole vegetable garden down on a concrete driveway, then lifted it up complete when her tenancy was up.

Glean: This is the ancient art of picking produce that isn't technically yours. Think tree fruit, edible weeds, berries that aren't being picked. "I ask permission," says Miller of her own gleaning, which supplies her and her friends with fruit through the winter. "Usually people are very keen for you to take it." Offer to share the results, either fresh or preserved. The most important thing: Get to know where the food plants are in your neighborhood.

Cuttings: Taking cuttings from plants (a small clipping that's then rooted in sand to create a new plant) is a great way to get free plants for yourself. Again, ask permission.

Seed balls: If you don't have direct or regular access to a space, seed balls are the answer. Made by combining seeds with material to protect them from birds and wind, the balls can be dropped onto empty patches of ground. Where? A neighbor's abandoned garden or bare parking strips, perhaps.

http://www.freep.com/