Why I Started My Own Guerilla Garden
So I was camping in the common across the road from my house a few months ago, and decided I had to start gardening. I’d never done it before. I didn’t exactly know why, but I know it’s important. There’s lessons I’ve learned (and are still to). I live in an apartment, so I knew I’d have to guerilla garden (where you stick plants on unused land) if I was to grow the many tasty vegetables I wanted to.
The suburb I live is pretty posh, but has lots of commons, and I live across the road from a village green, so figured there was a good start. I cleared a patch of land in the sun, surrounded it with a double hedge of bushes from the surrounding forest, and dumped half a ton of manure, chicken pellets and bone meal (for root growth). I’m taking my gardening tips from here.
Here are my two trees I bought for £20 (a pear and plum), ready to plant. The bottom pic is of my garden after I’d cleared it.
I have friends who’ve been teaching me, and it’s been a blast. I’m off right after I finish typing this to plant my first crop.
It has so many upsides, I can’t believe it’s not something most people do. And the stress release it gives me is outstanding. When I’ve had a rough day writing, I go over to my little secret garden, hang out there for a few hours, and come back chirping like a sparrow. My friend’s son was doing a stress monitoring test (he is some high profile exec, so his company was making sure he was healthy). They did so for a couple of months. The results came back and they asked him what he did between six and eight each evening. because there was a massive drop in stress levels during that time. He told them that it was when he was in the garden.
I found this on TED.com, and realized that the world is doing it (when they’re doing it in LA, it must be cool). This guy definitely has the vision. I firmly believe that gardening will be something that we don’t just use for leisure, or to get people off the streets, but that we will depend upon to feed our families. There is an economic storm coming, and substituting your income with grow your own veg will be something many of us will be forced to do.
[ted id=1685]
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