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Share your dispatches What did you do on 1 May 2012 2,651 people committed to plant sunflowers beyond their boundaries on this year’s International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day. Now let’s share what we did, where we sowed and what

e-mail me with a brief report and photos which I will share here next week. The original sunflower guerrillas were out in force in Brussels. I’ve seen reports of digs in Wichita, Oslo, The Hague, and Florida. We have much to look forward to.

International Tulip Guerrilla Gardening Day 9 October

Bologna, Italy, Terra di Nettuno guerrilla tulips

Elephant and Castle north roundabout guerrilla tulips

Location: London and beyond Guerrilla Gardening: Mostly around 9 Oct ‘11 The Results: March and April 2012 While thoughts soon turn to spring’s great simultaneous sunflower seed sowing, now is the time to soak in the success of autumn’s efforts as we marvel at the survival of the tulip, a most prized of spring bulbs, even

Westminster Bridge Road guerrilla tulips

though bores tell me it’s of no benefit except beautification... but isn’t that good enough for one night’s gardening? This is a mission to plant joy and dare your local environment of flower pickers and trampling pedestrians to stay away so we can all enjoy the triumph when your bulb bursts into bloom five months later. The gallery shows the results of my planting cycle ride on 9/10/11 with the results of other guerrilla gardeners further beyond.

London Road guerrilla tulips

Princess street guerrilla tulip planting

Borough Road guerrilla tulips 2012

Brandon Street guerrilla gardening

Brooklyn New York guerrilla gardening

Sutherland Avenue London W2

Tabard Street guerrilla tulips

Navarino Grove, London E8

St Georges Circus guerrilla tulips

Acacia Road London NW8 guerrilla gardening

Trinity Street London SE1 guerrilla gardening Clare Armstrong 4 April 2012

Cantelowes Garden NW5, planted by friends of CG 13 April 2012

On Tuesday 1 May it’s the 6th annual event of optimistic seed sowing across the northern hemisphere. Whether as solo operatives or massed groups thousands will be planting on Tuesday in the hope that golden beacons of cheerfulness and optimism will be blooming in their neighbourhood later this

International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day

summer. You win some, you lose some with sunflowers, but the victory is sweet when they flourish. Get inspiration from our album of guerrilla sunflowers from previous years.

guerrilla sunflower of Denmark Hill London

Join the international event

In Memory. Daffodils in the central reservation of Denmark Hill, South London

Steedman Street SE17

The late Cedric Frost 144 with his guerrilla daffodils in the lanes around Huby Yorkshire

A fringe guerrilla garden cut into the grass of the roundabout at the Elephant and Castle London

More than any other spring bulb daffodils are for me a consistent, loyal and determinedly cheerful announcement that spring is here. Without any fuss they come back year after year, a fresh start each season, a gardening ground hog day. This makes them both an ideal autumn planting for guerrilla gardeners and an appropriate choice for a memorial. It is with great sadness therefore to share the news that champion guerrilla daffodil planter Cedric Frost passed away this spring whilst out cycling along the very Yorkshire lanes he had planted in. His family have planted a roadside memorial. Another clump of daffodils grows on the A327 near Minley Wood where Stephen Minshull-Beech planted a memorial to Milly Dowler. The daffodils I’ve planted around my urban neighbourhood are not memorials to anyone or anything in particular, but they are a reminder of digs gone by, a legacy that does

News: 25 March 2012 London has a new flower festival this year. I’ve been part of the team of volunteers led by Tim Richardson launching the Chelsea Fringe in London, encouraging gardeners of all sorts to contribute something to an open-access festival, one that celebrates the amateur and the rule breaker as well as designers with ideas that don’t fit into the conventions of the

Chelsea Fringe 2012

White tulips flourishing in a pimped pavement on St George’s Road, London SE1 24 March 2012

As part of the fringe I'll lead

Sean's irises, Ryland Rd NW5

Pimped pavements of NW5 and Elephant and Castle

Location: Westminster Bridge Rd Guerrilla Gardening: 16 March Lavender doesn’t age gracefully, even with an annual haircut it begins to get brittle and a bit bare. We planted about 100 on

6 year old birthday dig

two traffic islands here in March 2006 over four very chilly nights where once there had just been scruffy grass. In the intervening six years our lavender fields have been through a lot - attacks from both Rosemary Beetle and even a

Guerrilla gardening London

Volkswagen. Concrete blocks have been dumped on it and I sometimes wonder if people have just sat on it

Planting the new lavender

Green Waste - transplanted poppies and for-get-me-nots

for an intense lavendery hit and, an unexpectedly prickly bottom.

As you probably know, it’s even had a Royal prune. So it was with some reluctance that I planned a significant uprooting, to remove the worst of the show and invest in the future. After all, this guerrilla garden is our cash crop, the one which we

flask of Welsh mead, and four more of us took to the bushes with spades and forks, all but one fell out with surprising speed. It’s six years since we manured the soil, and while the wood chip we spread has long decomposed it was time to feed the ground again, with many more sacks of horse poo. The gardening was all done within the hour, but the big effort was clearing away the dead lavender. Five trips - even in the capacious boot of an Austin Maxi - were required to the Battersea recycled centre, I’d have loved to see what a bonfire of dry lavender would have smelled like. We also scattered a lot of seed - annual mallow, Californian poppies, hollyhock and the following day I added in transplants of Welsh poppies and for-get-me-nots from Niloufer’s garden which is over-run with them.

In with the fedge, out with the fence. Guerrilla defences for daffodils and tulips from the trampling of stray pedestrians

Location: Around Elephant & Castle. Guerrilla Gardening: 11, 12 and 14 February 2012 There’s a growing trend in our cities for making streets ‘naked’. It’s about blurring the boundaries a bit between the different users particularly drivers and pedestrians. It’s about trusting people to think more and avoid putting themselves in danger without having barriers and signs that clutter the appearance. Transport for London have embraced the thinking* and are taking down many of the fences that divide the fast dual carriage ways from walkers. People now wander across when ever they like, ignore crossing points and drivers dodge them (usually). But such liberation is something I’ve struggled with for a while when it comes to creating shared space between pedestrians and guerrilla gardens - particularly in tree pits. They so readily become extensions to the pavement unless

Daffodils emerging, protected behind the fedge

there’s very obvious deliberate vegetation in them. In bleak February that’s a bit tricky especially if like me, you’re keen on growing spring flowering bulbs. There are weeks of vulnerability as they shoot up, and their stems are so easily decapitated at ground level or crushed beneath the surface as the ground becomes compacted. A good mulching helps, an easy and obvious sign that the tree pit is being cared for, and also a bit of cushioning

from those that still trample. I’ve had good fortune with crocus too, who get flowering so quickly that they act as bright cats eyes keeping foot traffic away. But now I’m trying a new technique - the fedge. It’s a fence that could become a hedge. I ordered four large bundles of willow stems over the web, and in three bursts of experimentation have surrounded seventeen tree pits around Elephant and Castle and the front of our mature guerrilla garden at the St George’s Circus roundabout. Each stem is trimmed so its quite firm a both ends and then it’s pocked deep into the ground, ideally at least 15cm or so, to make a hoop. There’s a chance these cuttings will take root and the hoops will sprout leaves. Such defences will not of course stop the determined trampler, but then a fence doesn’t stop a hurdler either. But most pedestrians aren’t determined tramplers, so the fedges appear to be working well. In fact several passers by complemented the new look, and that’s before the big spring show. If you give this a go just wait until the ground isn’t frozen, it makes prodding the willow in difficult and your knees will moan!

GGT usefi; fpr carruomh around the long willow stems

TfL's notice about fence removal

On Guerrilla Gardening in Korea

The new UK paperback edition from Bloomsbury has my photo of our guerrilla sunflowers on Denmark Hill blooming in 2011

Location: Perronet House, SE1 Ginger Gardening: 1 Jan 2012 London is drenched, the gardens are replenishing their precious stores of water so gardeners here turn to other pursuits. Guests to a New Year’s Eve party came bearing a flat pack ginger bread recreation of Perronet House and the guerrilla garden around it which I started in 2004. It’s a lot more colourful than the garden at the moment, although wall flowers are already in bloom. It’s also a lot more tasty

Ginger Garden

The Perronet House Garden during 2011

Olly and Lizzie creating it

Verbena and yellow roses outside Perronet House, London Road SE1

Tulips, April 2011 on London Road SE1

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