Guerrilla Gardens sighted and snapped in Sydney

[godotcab]

There are at least three guerrilla gardens in Sydney.

One is in Woolloomooloo, another on the other side of Kings Cross, kept up by a Maori fellow who lives in the condemned building it abuts, and another very nice little double garden above the Eastern Distributor in the middle of Sth Dowling St on both sides of Cleveland St.

All are initiatives without proper permission sought, on scraps of public land.

I have a gallery with plenty of photos of all three here -
http://gallery.me.com/godotcab#100671&bgcolor=black&view=grid

It is part of Wallup, an online gallery of street art, which is here -
http://www.wallup.net/

Colin Hubert

[meg]

There's a new garden on Canterbury Road, Canterbury, next to the station. When I went to work on Thursday morning (12th November), there was a small gathering of people, and someone taking pictures. On my way home, a dry, desolate plot had been transformed into a waterwise, quite lovely garden, complete with large marble sundial. Gorgeous. By Friday morning, people were sitting in the seats provided.

The Woolloomooloo garden has been vandalised, sadly. 

[godotcab]

Yeh, the Woolloomooloo garden has really gone to seed.

When it first appeared, I spoke to a happy picnicking bunch one Sunday arvo, they told me that they had given keys to the local residents in the hope they might take it up.

I suppose not many people want to hang out in the middle of an intersection above a freeway tunnel outlet.

There are pictures of the Woolloomooloo garden getting progressively more derelict, along with photos of two other guerrilla gardens here -
http://gallery.me.com/godotcab#100671&bgcolor=black&view=grid

Thanks for the tip off about the Canterbury garden.  I'll get some photos of that too.

[godotcab]

I've still to get out to Canterbury to find the garden near the station.  Probably Saturday I'll do that, and put photos up.

Any more precise directions would be appreciated.  Is it a guerrilla garden? Or a council or railway effort?

[greendreams]

Canterbury Station garden is of a magnitude i have rarely seen - the group must have a carpenter & welder on board - a new bike rack in shape of a bike, train mural, concrete paths, wooden benches, planters & screens. I have only just found this fabbo site & have been trying to find a group in Sydney only to find they have turned up in Canterbury at my station!!!

This is the same group I beileve who did the car on the eastern distributor site as they have exactly the same stencilled sign. Where are you fabulous group? I want to join your mighty green force!!

I'm in Canterbury but would be happy to get on board with any greening in Sydney, particularly inner west.....

[godotcab]

I'm glad to read that they are working with a label.

But is this label real guerrilla gardening?  Might it be the business name of a landscaper company getting council contracts? 

If it were, you would expect them to have a website.  I'm surprised they haven't joined us here, at this forum.

I got a call today from the same Channel 9 journo who called Nisaba.  I gave them a number of a friend who told me he is in touch with some guerrilla gardeners.

Colin, who wants to believe this is real

PS - the Woolloomooloo garden has gone completely now.  The site has reverted to bare concrete.

[godotcab]

More news on the Guerrilla Gardens that are elaborate and tagged with that stencil...

That is, the ones at Sth Dowling & Cleveland, and the one at Canterbury, apparently...

They are being produced for a TV production company for a show to be on Network Ten soon.

The Channel Nine journo didn't know this when she started ringing around today to find out who was making these very fine, elaborate landscaping efforts.

She knows that now, and may be losing interest in doing a story on it.

I suppose these things are to be expected, once the media starts noticing a movement like Guerrilla Gardening.  There will be those who will try to co-opt the idea, and those rivals who will be disappointed that they didn't try to do the same first.

It doesn't change the appeal of the idea of greening public spaces.

[godotcab]

The gallery of photos of three guerrilla gardens in Sydney is here -
http://gallery.me.com/godotcab/100671

I have enabled the upload button, so if you have any photos of guerrilla gardens in Sydney, you can upload them through your browser.

Please be sure that you have compressed photo files to web suitable size.  I havea fair bit of space available, but that won't last long if lots of full size photo files are put there.

Colin

[godotcab]

The Guerrilla Garden at Canterbury is very lovely.

It might be that it was done for a TV show, still to be screened, but it is a beautiful uncommissioned public work, and it is eminently suitable to its location near Canterbury Railway Station, by the side of the busy Canterbury Rd.

They have even included a large, sculptural bicycle with vertical rods, perfect for consumers to hitch their pushbikes to.

A feature of the Canterbury one is a large, formerly plain grey signal box, one end painted like the front of a steam train bursting through, and painted railway lines by planter boxes.

There is a sundial too.

Pictures are here -
http://gallery.me.com/godotcab/100671

If you have photos of Sydney guerrilla gardens you would like to add, please compress them to web size and upload them.

Colin

[Richard _001]

Here's more on the TV backed guerrilla gardens of Australia.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/a-garden-not-in-our-backyard--council/2008/11/25/1227491548438.html

Personally I've mixed feelings about this kind of thing. Superficially a big guerrilla garden, band stand and all is nice, but the likelihood (based on my numerous conversations with TV types in the UK) is that there will have been superficial consideration given to the long term upkeep of the garden. That's just not in the nature of TV, their money goes into making what ends up on film, at best it's inspirational propaganda rather than certain long term community improvement. I've made the mistake myself and have been urged by TV news crews into gardening a space too big too quickly for the sake of an impressive picture, but a series like this escalates those risks to bigger levels, and with it the credibility of all guerrilla gardeners. They'll have big budgets (bigger than most guerrilla gardeners would even be able to spend) and you can be sure the spectacle has been done more for TV more than the community. (To put a band stand there is really asking for trouble, it's guerrilla building not guerrilla gardening! The locals will need to do more than water this garden, as the host is quoted as saying).

I really hope this new Channel 10 show encourages people to guerrilla garden in a way that they can do so manageably. But I fear this is a band-wagon jumping piece of entertainment fluff, a new look do-gooding-tinged makeover show that muddles the Australians about what guerrilla gardening really can be. It's up to guerrilla gardeners in Australia to nudge the media in the right direction.

(Founder of GuerrillaGardening.org)

[godotcab]

Richard's thoughts seem to have the wisdom of experience.

I know that the Woolloomooloo garden was planned and funded by a TV company with a first floor office diagonally across the intersection.  I don't know if it was the same company as are doing the spate of guerrilla gardens now.

The fate of the Woolloomooloo garden - it withered, and decayed, and finally was cleaned up to revert to blank concrete - might be a foretaste of these other, flash, big money guerrilla gardens.

The contrast is the old Maori's lovely garden along the Ward Ave side of Hensley Hall in Kings Cross.  He squats in that condemned building, and has built up this garden over some years.  It is beautifully established and idiosyncratic.

[godotcab]

Woolloomooloo's Guerrillas Gardeners' site has been revived!

Above the Eastern Distributor tunnel outlet, at the busy corner of Cathedral and Palmer, it now looks like it was put together out of set design props for the new Baz Luhrman film.

It features a lovely mnemonic by which you can remember how to spell the name of the suburb, the silliest in a silly city.  I had long remembered that explanation as 'sheep-toilet-cow-toilet'. 

You can the new photos of it, along with photos of Guerrilla Gardens at Kings Cross, Surry Hills and Canterbury, here -
http://gallery.me.com/godotcab#100671&bgcolor=black&view=grid

At the end are a series of shots of the Woolloomooloo garden decaying, then of the new garden in the loo.

I have yet to see, or to photograph, the Guerrilla Gardeners efforts at Newtown, Ashfield, and Killara.

If you want to add photos of these, or other Guerrilla Gardens in Sydney, please, feel free.  The upload button at that gallery is enabled.  But please compress files to web format.

There is a little bloggage about Guerrilla Gardening here -
http://www.wallup.net/Site/_New_Now/Entries/2008/10/21_Gardens_%26_Knitting_%26_X-Treem_Street_Lounging.html

[godotcab]

I've just added photos of the TV money fuelled Guerrilla Garden in Newtown, here -
http://gallery.me.com/godotcab#100671&bgcolor=black&view=grid

[Swaggie]

Website for the tv program is http://www.guerrillagardeners.com.au/
They ask for Sydney-siders to dob in a site.

[godotcab]

Thanks for that link, Swaggie.

I've sent them a suggestion for the Hanging Gardens of Barangaroo.

[godotcab]

Found!

Another Guerrilla Garden from the TV money fuelled crew, in Annandale, downt he end of Johnston St, under the light rail bridge, near The Cresent.

This one features a troll!

Photos here -
http://gallery.me.com/godotcab#100671&bgcolor=black&view=grid

Colin

[godotcab]

Sometime in the week before Christmas, the "Have you paid your troll?" message on Annandale's Guerrilla Garden was capped, by commercial posters.

Picture here, page 2 -
http://gallery.me.com/godotcab#100671&bgcolor=black&view=grid&sel=50

[funsizem]

Anyone keen to do some non TV crew funded gardening in the Darlo/Paddo/Kings Crosso area in the next few weeks?

[godotcab]

I had been told there was another TV funded Guerrilla Garden in Ashfield.

Yesterday, someone told me it was in Frederick St.

Tonight, in a quiet spell in the cab, I drove slowly along Frederick St to find it.  I passed several parks and playgrounds, and it seemed every yard had lots of lovely greenery.

So, the obvious question came to me.  Is Sydney screamingly in need of greening?

Most of it is pretty leafy.

Eventually, I found the Guerrilla Garden, on the corner of Milton St and Liverpool Rd. 

The main feature of this one is a huge scale pot plant.  The tree is taller than a house, and the pot itself is larger and more spacious than my old flat in Glebe.

Pictures are here -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25063581@N08/sets/72157612369130045/

[Graceless]

Hey,
I'm new here. I first encountered the awesome work done by GG with the Troll at Annadale and again more recently with teh installment in front of the post office on Darling Street in Balmain.
Love the work, would like to get involved.

[godotcab]

You and your friends could make a real, live guerrilla garden wherever you think one is needed.

The big, elaborately landscaped Guerrilla Gardens around Sydney, like the ones you refer to, are being funded by a TV company for something to air on Channel Ten sometime.

I did meet some of the people making this garden, months ago in Woolloomooloo, one Sunday arvo.  They were bright, fun people.

Thanks for the tip on the Darling St garden, by the way. 

I'll photograph it soon and show it, along with the other ones, here -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25063581@N08/sets/72157612369130045/

[godotcab]

Two new photos of the Guerrilla Garden in Balmain, on the waterfront theme, here -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25063581@N08/sets/72157612369130045/

[Dirty Digger]

Looks like another (commercial) garden now at St Peters station.  Off the end of the platform on the eastern end.

These are cool from a community / guerilla point of view but kind of getting away from the "greening" idea of GG.  If we are just adding more props and paint into the environment what's the point (apart from making a TV program).  These are more Jamie Dury and less Peter Cundall for my liking.

[godotcab]

Another real live Guerrilla Garden in Sydney is the long established Lavender Bay one by the artist Wendy Whiteley.

Locals call it "Wendy's Secret Garden".

She started it on land owned by the railways on the steep bank behind the house where she lived with her husband, Brett and daughter Arkie. 

The ashes of both husband and daughter are scattered in there somewhere.

This is a lovely, secluded place with many paths, bowers, sculptures, and table set ups for beautiful picnics.

I have photos of it here -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25063581@N08/sets/72157612369130045/

Apparently, before Wendy Whiteley made it a garden, it was overgrown and derelict with rubbish and dumped cars.

[godotcab]

There is talk from Chris Darwin about his guerrilla gardens in Sydney and the Blue Mountains in the new Radio National show '360', available to hear here -
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/360/stories/2009/2472931.htm

Chris Darwin is a descendant of the famous scientist Charles Darwin, and the show is more about various of this family in Australia.

[godotcab]

The TV show on Channel Ten in Australia is almost upon us now.

Mel Campbell has mustered some impressions and arguments about the Guerrilla Gardeners show at The Enthusiast website, here -
http://www.theenthusiast.com.au/archives/2009/how-green-was-my-telly/

The article runs some of my views, but also quotes Richard Reynolds being a bit bemused about it.

[Richard _001]

I've just had a response to my inquiry at the ambiguous http://www.guerrillagardening.com.au/ asking for more info. See below:

Hi there Richard

Good to hear from you.  I developed the TV series we're making and am happy to fill you in on a project we're all very excited by. It's simply called Guerrilla Gardeners.

I've been interested in the wonderful world of Guerrilla Gardening for many years and have done bits and pieces around my neighborhood and workplace for about 10 years, including a lovely garden in the street outside my house which we established without permission on council land. (Incidentally, we haven't had to water it for 3 years now).

I?ve also been fascinated for some time by the story of a bunch of guys at Sydney Uni in the 1980s who ran around on weekends and planted small gardens off their own bat in public spaces forgotten by developers and road builders.  So early last year we shot a proof of concept TV pilot building a garden in Woolloomooloo, right outside our office. The test was to see if we could work in the daylight using disguises which I thought would be fun for a TV show.

The reel was terrific - we turned a concrete slab into a typical Australian garden - and we have a great bunch of gardeners and artists involved.  We convinced Network Ten to come on board to fund the series, which is a great fit given its youthful demographic. While it is not an expensive show, the budget allows us to buy more established plants and undertake bigger gardens than we could otherwise handle.  The underlying concept is true to the long history of Guerrilla Gardening and we hope it will raise the public's awareness and question why we have to put up with unsightly spaces in the concrete jungle. 

The public response to the gardens has been fantastic and despite the drought here, most of the gardens are doing well.  Some have been adopted by local authorities and others by the communities.  We are not popular with local councils generally and are currently grappling with some pretty difficult issues.

The show premieres next week in primetime and while the contents have been kept under wraps, there is great public and media buzz about the show and the concept.  Surprisingly, most people have never heard of the concept of guerrilla gardening so my great hope is that we help fuel a public groundswell - one which I know you have helped generate in the UK - inspiring ordinary citizens to arm themselves with shovels and attack the horrible eyesores in our cities.

If you're interested, I'd be happy to send you some episodes - we have finished the first 2.  You can downlo the series tease on our FTP site http://www.ftpcordelljigsaw.com/GG/

Cheers

Nick
__________________________________
Nick Murray
Cordell Jigsaw Group
1st Floor  129 Cathedral St
Woolloomooloo  NSW
Australia  2011
p +61 2 9326 9922
f  +61 2 9326 9277

[godotcab]

Wow, thanks Richard,

It's great to read the fluff.

I'll probably enjoy the TV show, but I can't imagine that I'll enjoy it as much as I did visiting Wendy Whiteley's secret garden at Lavender Bay last week.

Colin, who recommends Wendy's secret garden as a place to take someone special for a picnic on Valentines Day.

[godotcab]

New snaps of a TV funded Guerrilla Garden at Cabramatta, here -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25063581@N08/sets/72157612369130045/

[meg]

The programme screened it's first episode tonight, and it was my local garden at Canterbury station! The "Oh my, we could get caught at any minute" vibe was a little cringeworthy, but I guess that's what makes good television.
Ultimately, we have a lovely green space replacing an ugly dusty one, which makes me happy. Some of the plants were stolen a month or two back, and I noticed last week that they had been replaced and the whole plot given a bit of a weed. Maintenance from the crew I would imagine, though now that the episode has screened I doubt the crew will be back. Next school holidays, I might have to  introduce my kids to the wonderful activity that is weeding. 
I realise that this commercial venture goes against the grain of the genuine guerrilla gardeners, but at the end of the day, there are  some more green pockets in my city, and for that I am grateful.

[Richard _001]

More coverage about the show:

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25067990-23272,00.html

It'll be interesting to see what happens to the gardens. I fear their Father Christmas approach of plonking them in and hoping local people adopt them is a little dumb - it's more about the fun of transformation and less about the love of the end result (of course, that makes good TV), and it creates the old "a dog is not just for Christmas" problem.

It turns out the Australian show is virtually identical to a proposal I wrote up three years ago and circulated around production companies in London after they bombarded me with requests to do something and the opportunity seemed like a great one. But my insistence of working with locals and doing what we could commit to wasn't shared by the TV folk and I moved away from the idea and resigned from a project that was being developed at the BBC. So like a horticulturalist who has given up experimenting with a new breed of plant before taking them out of the green house I can now observe what happens to the idea in someone elses' hands and see if my fears were valid or not (even if the producer gives me no credit for feeding the guerrilla gardening publicity campaign in Australia over the last two years!) I hope some good comes out of it.

Richard

[godotcab]

Some good will come out of it.

I saw the first episode tonight in my dinner break during a cab shift.

It was fun TV, in a Mythbusters sort of way, with a young and energetic crew working together and discussing what to do and how to do it.

The hook was the illegality.  What kept the viewer interested was the chance they could get into trouble.

The justification was the transforming of a dead little spot into a pretty garden, of some real use to the locals.  It is sited by a busy road in between a bus stop and a railway station.  This first episode was the making of the Canterbury garden, which is the best of the ones I have seen, the most useful one.

[Kiashu]

Good on you, Nick, you just made our job a lot bloody harder. Now the cops and the councils have their eye out for us. I was challenged by a council worker for the first time today, I bribed him with a longneck but I can't do that every time.

I hope you enjoyed your fifteen minutes, you drongo, now you've bollocksed it up for a year or so for us until they forget about it.

[godotcab]

Kiashu,

I see your point. 

Making a TV show of Guerrilla Gardening is pretty transparently a way to say "Look at me!  I'm getting away with breaking the law!  Ain't I too cool!"

And yeh, it jars, somehow.

And I can see that it might make the fun (not 'work', I hope) that you have a bit more risky.

I hope you don't mind if I quote you (as an anonymous 'Kiashu', of course) in a blog about it soon.

Colin, who doesn't really know a all about Guerrilla Gardening, never having planted a guerrilla, and not knowing what manure to feed one.

[vermont]

Just another example of a genuine 'underground' movement rapidly being co-opted to satisfy a commercial imperative. If any genuine GG's were involved in making the show, they were duped.

[godotcab]

Where's the fun in a TV show about Guerrilla Gardening?

New blog entry with some thoughts, impressions etc here -
http://www.wallup.net/Site/_New_Now/Entries/2009/2/24_Getting_Away_With_It.html

Colin, getting away with it