On Guerrilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening Without Boundaries - Hardcover

Gardeners, unite! A call to reclaim the drab and neglected urban spaces of our cities and towns through stealth gardening tactics.
Four years ago, Richard Reynolds found himself without a garden to call his own. Stuck in a London apartment building without so much as a windowsill, he began to sneak out under cover of darkness to plant flowers in the building’s neglected public flower beds. Encouraged by his victory, he advanced to other “orphaned” patches of land in his neighborhood and reached out for support by setting up a Web site, www.guerrillagardening.org. Before long, thousands of guerrilla gardeners worldwide had enlisted on the site, all stealthily cultivating someone else’s land—whether to beautify their neighborhoods, to bring their communities together, as a political gesture, or for basic subsistence. Part manual, part manifesto, On Guerrilla Gardening gives you everything you need to join the revolution.
Drawing on the venerable origins of the movement to reclaim our public land, from victory gardens to New York’s Green Guerrillas, the book takes us to sites of illicit cultivation from San Francisco to Singapore, London to Libya. Packed with photos, stories of battles won and lost, and practical advice—such as how to plan an attack, what plants to have in your arsenal, how to evade the authorities, and how to use propaganda effectively—On Guerrilla Gardening is an irresistible invitation to shoulder your shovel and strike out beyond your picket fence.

Richard Reynolds was born in 1977 and grew up gardening with his family. His first illegal cultivation was at college, where he planted windowsills with boxes of Busy Lizzies. He has been a guerrilla gardener in earnest since 2004; his Guerrilla Gardening organization now has thousands of active members worldwide and has been featured on ABC, NPR, the BBC, Richard and Judy, the Washington Post, and many other places. Aside from his guerrilla activity, he works as an advertising planner. He lives in London.