Colorful islands provide surprises
Have you ever had that "Oops, where did that suddenly come from?" moment? You get off the subway as usual in the morning, follow the stairs to the street, and suddenly you see it: a small, colorful group of balcony flowers: bright red geraniums, a slightly premature orange dahlia, brilliant white daisies, and even a tomato plant. They're all milling around in the small patch of earth around the street tree, where usually only cigarette butts land, neighborhood dogs investigate, or bleary-eyed partygoers put down their last beer; and now, there, albeit modestly, a small, blooming landscape has emerged. Or by the subway tunnel, just before the train disappears into the darkness, plastic waste rises in the wake of the breeze and sinks back to the ground, when a sunflower suddenly beckons you. And in the spot around the corner, where the sidewalk slabs, dotted with old chewing gum stains, merge almost seamlessly into an ash-gray privacy wall, which in turn is crowned by rows of barbed wire, nasturtiums have been winding their way for a few days, happily pushing out blossoms. If such forbidding, dreary, and desolate corners of a big city have suddenly become greener, more colorful, and more beautiful overnight, then it certainly wasn't elves or garden gnomes at work, nor the night shift landscape gardeners from the district depot, but activists from the "guerrilla gardening" movement.
In the beginning there were the Green Guerrillas
Originally, burying plants at night or throwing seed bombs into inaccessible places was an expression of civil disobedience in public spaces – an unusual means of political protest, so to speak. Nowadays, the secret "surprise plantings" of guerrilla gardening are also attracting a lot of support from "harmless" city dwellers. The fan base is diverse, from young to old. If you ask about the origins of the garden guerrilla, which translates as "small army," you have to go back to 1973, specifically to New York. There, the artist Liz Christy founded the group "Green Guerrillas." Together with friends, neighbors, and volunteers, they cleared a vacant lot in the center of New York of garbage and debris and planted a community garden there. This was the beginning of the guerrilla gardening movement. In Europe, the green fighters first came to attention on May 1, 2000, in London. Environmental activists, anti-globalization protesters, and people with convictions simply ploughed up a lawn in Parliament Square and planted it in order to “take back the streets.”
