Foraging and Guerilla Gardening at Spring Into Action

Two of the workshops that I enjoyed most were those on Foraging and Guerilla Gardening. Foraging is the process of searching for food, and in this context involved rooting around in neglected weedy corners and the Arboretum for edible and useful plants and trees. I was certainly surprised at the number of "eatable" species we came across, including the coconut scented flowers of gorse that you can make wine out of, several "Sainsbury's car park" plants with berries that are good for jam, violets in the cemetary, and the berries of the fuscia plant. It's amazing how a corner of Nottingham I thought I knew could turn out to have so many tasty secrets... Our knowledgeable guide was painted a picture foraging's history as closely coupled with subversion, debauchery and lawlessness! Let's hope we can maintain some of that spirit today. Guerilla gardening, planting, and unplanting were discussed and carried out in Monday's workshop. Guerilla planters plant tree and shrub seedlings, plants and seed bombs (seeds mixed in clay) in unused, abandoned, or just plain boring spaces. These could be edible plants, such as cuttings from fruit bushes, or just ornamental, to brighten up the space. In some parts of the world guerilla gardening is highly organised and involves the maintenance of squatted community gardens (e.g. in New York). The philosophy seems to be all about taking responsibility for the open spaces around us without asking for permission. With planting it's also about being able to accept that some of your efforts will, inevitably, fail, but some will grow and grow. This couldn't have been clearer than when we planted a few birch seedlings in what appeared to be a poorly looked after piece of council land, only to be told by the owner that he was about to clear it to build new flats! Still, I will be looking out for our plants (and probably adding to them) when I'm walking through Radford in the future. For some inspiration from around the world check out this site. Nice one Spring into Action, for opening our eyes to some urban ecology!