Guerrilla Gardening Takes Britain By Storm

washingtonpost.com:

In February, the National Trust, a preservation group, pledged to create 1,000 plots over the next three years, many of them on the grounds of stately homes, including Gibside, the ancestral estate of the queen mother's family.

"It's like gardening in the world's grandest garden," said Mark Heath, a 32-year-old volunteer who tends pumpkins and other vegetables at Gibside.

Read the whole story: washingtonpost.com

Comments

[spikeykitten]

"Even graveyards are being turned into gardens"
Why not just compost the people - that would be greener.

[noneIn2008]

Reminds me of "Secret Window" with Johnny Depp.

[mairs]

What a nice story. I love the idea of seeing fruits and vegetables growing in odd bits of land around town.

[liquidzen]

It is lovely seeing people all around the world re-connecting back to Mother Earth.

[BannedNBoston]

Dont worry Britain will put cameras in the cemeterys and jail the stoners.

[deluk]

Hmmm we don't have quite the same enthusiasm for jailing people for minor offences that the US has.

[RJII]

sad, but true.

[ezeflyer]

Ours are called pot farmers.

[TXfemmom]

We got gung ho about food plants this year and then we started having 98 degree days in April, unheard of even here, and then we were sruck by a drought. Since my husband had drug his feet on getting rain collection barrels, as I wanted, and we had almost sixty days without rain anyway, we saved just the best plants.

Next year we plan to be better prepared and are growing ours in containers and raised beds.

[GunneraGirl]

Once in England, I complimented someone's gorgeous, vigorous rose bushes. She replied that the neighborhood had good luck with roses, because since the 1600s the area was a paupers grave and a plague pit and was therefore rich with calcium.

[BlackBuddha]

brilliant.

[Patrick McCarthy]

brilliant! brilliant!

[skymuffin]

Roses, are one thing, but veggies and fruits? Yeesh. But, hey, we're running out of space, so whaddya gonna do?

[JayDubs]

A more deceptively incisive headline would've been "UK takes up growing Soylent Greens!"

[MED1025]

Turning some one's grave into your garden - bad karma.

[BearsLeft]

I hope to fertilize some fine strawberries when I'm gone. What could be more natural?

[Patrick McCarthy]

indeed!

[RJII]

Mmm, mmm. BearsLeft is so yummy this season...

[truthartbeauty]

not at all. a very natural thing I think

[MsPolyTheist]

Who writes these headlines?? There is nothing "guerrilla" about this, if you read the entire Washington Post article. When I read the headline I imagined groups were reclaiming empty lots and other barren public spaces they didn't actually own. These are just community gardens, legally provided for in 19th century British law.

[mountainweb]

Welcome to what passes for modern journalism, or the lack thereof...

[Patrick McCarthy]

for real!

[retroredux]

I don't think those beds were actually on top of graves but beside them-LOL. I'd like to do something like this in my town-we are smallish (13000) but all the land is pretty much taken up-but there is still fronts yards and bits and pieces here and there that could be "harvested" for small gardens.

[drkazmd65]

Personally - I want to be cremated,.­.. but should I end up in the ground, I want them to plant some nice pecan or apple tree over my biodegradable coffin,... And my descendants can go make a pie, eat it, and remember Great-gran­dpa,...

[sixyfivepercentwater]

I sure wouldn't want to eat anything that was grown in a cemetery, and I'd think the local council would have something to say about that. Other than that one thing, this is a great idea. It can work in England because there is so much public land. In America almost all the land is owned by private individuals, so guerrilla gardening probably won't catch on.

[classicalgeek]

On the contrary, every roadside is public land. We have far more public land here than they do in England. Millions of acres more.