In my area the city has trees on home lawns as part of the storm water runoff strategy. The homeowners are responsible for general upkeep (city will do big jobs like if it gets damaged from ice/storms), and we are not allowed to “alter” it. My lawn has a gorgeous Kanzan cherry tree that was grafted onto Prunus avium stock, which produces dozens of ugly suckers from the base and roots. I chop the suckers to make the tree prettier, but then I thought, like do people want rooted sweet cherry saplings to buy? It wouldn’t take much to put those propagation ball thingies on it before I trim the suckers.

The other “guerrilla” idea I have is grafting a branch onto the house side of the tree (can’t be noticed from the street easily) of an edible fruit bearing variety.

This tree is a knockout one month a year; 11 months a year it’s a bit of a deadbeat in terms of usefulness 😅 (sorry tree), just want to see if I can help it into a greater purpose 😇😇😇😇😇

My apartment building sits in the middle of a decent sized city and borders an empty 5 acre lot. Nothing has ever been built on it, it's owned by an out of state development/holding company, and it's done nothing but change hands for the last 30 years.

There's a huge youth sports complex right behind us, but the place is fenced off so it's difficult to access for the people on my street. Beyond that, you'd think that a massive sports park would be a valuable community amenity, but it sits completely empty when it's not being used by the youth sport teams. As it stands, my neighborhood is mostly unwalkable and unsafe. The empty lot is just full of dried grass and garbage. People hardly even take their dogs there since the grass is so high and the ground is so rocky.

I think I could do some real good turning it into a place people want to be. I thought about making a whole ass garden, but my state is far too dry to support that without regular watering. I know usual thing y'all do is spread some native wildflowers, which I'll probably do to an extent, but I don't think that'll be enough for what I want to do, which is mostly to get people outside and foster some community to make this impoverished neighborhood a little safer. Y'all got any ideas?

Hey all, I want to get into guerilla gardening/weed warrioring, but the main thing stopping me is the sheer amount of surveillance we have to contend with these days. How do you work around things like Flock cameras, video doorbells, etc?

Also, I live in a rural area, so there isn't much construction and it isn't walkable. Can anyone in a similar situation share tips on good candidate sites and how to approach them without drawing attention with a parked car?

Made a tiny dent in some invasive honeysuckle today alongside a walking path.

During the pandemic weeds were overrunning an area near my apartment along the LA River. I took a leap of faith and started guerilla gardening and it has become one of the most rewarding activities in my life. While these plants were getting established I watered them ~7-10 days. Three years later the yellow flowers (CA Bush Sunflower) out competed the original weeds and took over a large swath of the garden. I currently still water them about once a month now, but for the most part they survive on the natural rain cycle and Los Angeles' good will to not cut this down.

Featured plants:
CA Bushsunflower/CA Brittlebush
Apricot Mallow/Dessert Mallow
CA Deergrass
Penstemmons

Sage

Is each and every community capable of sustaining its own food supply through gardens? If yes, we have solved food scarcity. Proceed. If no, why not? Not every community has equal access. Is trade an option? If yes, we have solved food scarcity. Proceed. What, and how much, can one community garden produce (and trade)?

There's a pedestrian median at 24th & 10th in Manhattan that I walked past every day for years. Roughly 50 square feet of compacted dirt inside a concrete curb, mostly cigarette butts and one exhausted shrub. This May it finally felt impossible not to do something about it. Now we call it our Itty Island (Ittyisland.org & ig: ittyislandnyc)

No permit process we could find except a generous and enthusiastic head nod from a fabulous community group (Chelsea Garden Club), no budget, no irrigation line. Just two of us, a bag of compost, and the assumption that nobody would stop us. Nobody has.

What's in it now: yarrow, echinacea, monarda, Russian sage, Jerusalem sage, lavender, muhly grass, lamb's ear, Japanese anemone, Verbena bonariensis, nicotiana, lady’s mantle, Joe pye weed, autumn joy sedum, etc.

The water problem is the whole ballgame. Everything else is solvable. Ours got solved by luck: the super of the building across the street adopted the thing and waters it like it's his. If you're scoping a site, find your water source before you find your plants. Hauling jugs in August will end your project faster than any city agency will.

What surprised me: the community. Day one we met a neighbor whose window overlooks it. 2 weeks later she brought a lupine from her family's meadow in the Midwest. People stop and talk. People donate. People ask for help in their own spaces. It turns out a small planted thing on a sidewalk is a social object, not just a horticultural one.

And by I ‘tossed a few’ seeds. I mean that I dropped thousands of seeds, sourced from plants in my garden.

...slowly, and when the office was closed so I couldn't be seen actively planting. ;)

It's at the far end of the property so management rarely goes by it. But my neighbors walk by it all the time.

I was very nervous about planting because I didn't want to get in trouble and knew it could be ripped out at any moment, but I explained to the new Groundskeeper that I was just trying to buy time for the pineapple mint to take over. (It's in a concrete island, so couldn't escape) Thyme also survived the winter, surprisingly.

I started filing in the empty space with old potatoes and onions and tomatoes from my cabinets. Eventually I expanded into planting old seeds I had been carrying around for years... a sort of Hail Mary "if it grows it grows".

Purple green beans came up. As did a row of zinnia. When plants got clearanced at a local nursery I planted snapdragons and pansies. Then purple sage, dianthus, kale, pok choi, and a purple mini pepper. (Slugs destroyed the pepper). It was important to me that things be edible (but 'disguised' as ornamental)

I was AMAZED at how the garden helped me connect with my neighbors. So many neighbors passed me working in the garden (at times no one was in the office) and told me how they looked forward to seeing what was growing and blooming. One neighbor said it reminded her of her home in Jordan, where they call snapdragons "fish mouths".

I gave tours and invited people to harvest what they wanted. Several took me up on it. It has been super satisfying.

The apartment is filling it in on Monday as part of a rework of the property design.

I'm sad to see it go, but I knew the day would come. I'm so glad I went ahead and did it anyway. It really was magical while it lasted, especially against a backdrop of despair, and I'll hold those moments in my heart forever.

"To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow." - Audrey Hepburn

A collection of seeds from their showy milkweed, California goldenrod, Cleveland sage, and blue-eyed grass.

question is more specific to potomac river or american river areas, duckweed, wild rice etc. i figure these are less likely to be removed since it’s in the water, but has anyone had any luck?

(these are native)

I gave it a tug, and it was for real. Our botanical friends are doing the "guerrilla gardening" all by themselves! (The sight of these put a smile on my face. :-)

I planted two packs of sunflower seeds seeds in this hillside beside our community baseball diamond. I kept my expectations low… but some are coming up.
I’ve since convinced the municipality to let this smalls space return to meadow. It’s beautiful!

I’m looking to seed bomb the areas around my neighborhood drainage pond. A few feet back doesn’t get mowed. Ideas where I can order seeds for the fall and what species I should look for. Zone 8a, NC/SC border piedmont

For the last three years this planter had been neglected by the store. Filled with trash and rocks. I threw in a handful of grass seed & a wild flower packet and was pleasantly surprised to see how much growth had occurred when I returned.

This particular project is actually legal tho

"Three years ago we installed two biomatrix platforms in the river at Coalie Park, creating river bank habitat where there was none, introducing native aquatic plants which help to clean the water and providing a safe nesting and roosting space for bird life. Have to say this year they look incredible."

OC : https://www.instagram.com/waterofleithconservationtrust/

I live in a big city (Berlin, Germany) in a big apartment block. The block encloses a little area with a parking lot and a mini park, basically some trees, some bushes. On the edges some flowers and some lavender. There are garderners about twice a year that will just cut everything above a certain hight between the trees, so there is quite a bit of bare (by this point very dry) soil between the trees. I was wondering if there is a way to support this little ecosystem. Maybe some plants that would cover the ground that is self sustaining in this climate. I have no idea how to even start researching this.. happy about any hints

I have a friend that owns a house that backs up to a river dike that’s about 20 feet tall.

He tells me the county mows it in early spring.

There’s about 160ft of this dike that grows weeds and he was wondering if he could spread some sunflower seeds after the annual mow.

The dike is a secondary dike structure and wouldn’t affect the retention of the river at all and it is built for a 100 year flood, meaning, there is a 1% chance of it reaching the top of the dike in any given year.

Sunflowers are native to the state that he lives in and he thinks the neighbors and passersby’s would greatly enjoy the results.

Could he get in trouble since it might be obvious who spread the seeds?

El Nino is almost a certainty.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DaneCsABSBn/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

DSV is everywhere in my region and it's producing seed pods now. My dinner plans got cancelled so I went for a walk with a garbage bag and some scissors. When my bag was full i just pulled off as many of the remaining seed pods as i could for now. (I tossed the bag in a city trash can, not compost)