Links for Gardening and Politics

Groups that have taken up the issue of the relationship between residents and public-private space. The relationships that develop between individuals and their environments through plants, especially food producing plants, are illustrated through direct actions such as foraging for fruit in public spaces or planting food producing plants in public spaces. Some examples:

Green Guerillas

(www.greenguerillas.org)

Began in 1973 by Liz Christy in Manhattan, who gathered her friends and neighbors together to transform a vacant lot in Manhattan into a community garden. This developed into actions such as throwing seeds over fences into vacant lots, installing window boxes, planting flowers in tree pits, and helping transform vacant lots into community gardens in other places.

Guerrilla Gardener

(www.guerrillagardening.org -  video)

Begun as a blog of his illegal gardening in public space, Richard Reynolds has continued with helpers to make videos of their gardening interventions.

Fallen Fruit

(www.fallenfruit.org - media, video)

Began with mapping the fruit trees of one neighborhood in Los Angeles, and it has developed into larger mapping projects, foraging walks, and artist in resident projects.

Not Far From the Tree

(www.notfarfromthetree.org)

Organisation that picks fruit for individuals who own fruit trees and shares the fruit. One third goes to the fruit tree owners, another third goes to the volunteers for their labour, and the final third is distributed (by bicycle or cart) to community organizations in the neighbourhood who can make good use of the fresh fruit.

Katie Holten

(www.katieholten.com - public artworks – tree museum)

Artist who uses the relationship between people and plants as the focus of her projects. In one project, she created a museum of 100 trees along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, NY. There were points marked at which one could listen to stories from a resident of the area about their relationship to the surrounding natural environment.

Los Angeles Urban Rangers

(www.laurbanrangers.org - field sites – malibu public beaches)

Organisation that develops guided hikes, campfire talks, field kits and other tools to inspire explorations of the LA urban environment and its surroundings.

They take as their perspective the point of view of the US national park service and apply this to urban environments.

Finding the limits of the public-private spaces in and around LA, they have for example made a Malibu Public Beach Safari which teach people what are the laws on trespassing and private property and how people can safely and legally use the beaches without trespassing on the estates of the wealthy residents. This location is one of the most expensive places to own a home, and the reason for this is that the homes have private beach access. This limits the public from being able to use the natural landscape without braking the laws of private property in California. The project calls into question the issues around ownership of land, of class divisions, and of the relationship to nature that is determined by these social forces.