Urban or Guerrilla Gardening

In a city, many if not most people obviously don't have a garden. Yet there is open space that can be gardened in although it may not be as simple as just putting in plants -- read on. Also, some people have balconies where they garden. If anyone can volunteer me a photographs from their balcony garden, I will add it to this post.

Some of my customers have successfully gotten permission from the NYC Parks department to create native plant gardens within city parks. These are typically done with an informal group. The Parks Dept. has in the past even provide the plants with some advance notice. No guarantees about any of this.

If you try to just plant something in a park or untended plot of land, be aware that there will probably be someone coming by at least once a year to weed it and they will probably pull out your plants. Or they may come by multiple times per year with a weed whacker and kill off your plants this way. This is your chance to explore the city and discover a crack in the concrete or some other prime location for planting where your plants won't be disturbed. Personally, I'm keeping an eye on an area of highway construction near where I live where there may be an opportunity in the future to plant on newly disturbed land.

Rain gardens and tree pits remain prime territory for urban gardening. Even though the tree pits or rain gardens belong to either the City or the D.E.P., the most important person to deal with is the property owner on the other side of the tree pit or rain garden. When you are out and about, keep in mind all the locations where you think you would like to plant and if you see someone who may be the property owner, this is the time to approach them with the question about if they would be O.K. if you take care of "their" tree pit or rain garden. You can pick up the trash and keep it weeded in exchange for them being "OK" with you gardening there.

That's what I did in the pictures shown here. The property manager was happy to have me fix up the tree pit because he is trying to sell this monster of a house. I added some non-native petunias just to keep it from looking like a patch of weeds. I put in a 'Protect Our Native Plants' sign to also help with that and to try and keep the city from ripping out my plants if and when they come to water the tree. I will be selling these signs. I also put in 2 more bags of wood chips. It turns out they are pretty cheap at about $5 or so per bag.

At the farmer's market I'm also going to be doing something with seed bombs as this is another way to perhaps get some native plants growing in out of the way places where you can't garden. I haven't tried this yet, but will try distributing some bombs in the Fall.

And a video https://youtu.be/Q68QAsHbVzE?si=RhBzabY4-MWc3Lh1

After

Before

The House

Details

6 petunias, 1 mature Prairie Smoke, 1 mature Anise Hyssop, 1 mature Wild Bergamot, 1 mature Spotted Beebalm, 6 Eastern Red Columbine seedlings