Starting a guerilla garden can be a good project for your community to gain skills, connections, produce food; increase greenery and habitat in your area. Communities growing their own food is an extremely reasonable response to the commodification of food and the intensifying cost of living crisis and climate crisis.
There are many different ways to guerrilla garden; small farm gardens like the Radicle Roots Commons, planting a food forest, planting in verges, seed bombing and re-vegetating. The Radicle Roots commons wants to promote all of these methods, with particular emphasis on larger collective guerilla garden projects that can reclaim more land from disuse or private ownership whilst creating more resilient and strong communities that can think and act for themselves and in solidarity with others.
So here is a basic guide to how you can start a guerrilla garden like the Radicle Roots Commons. Keep an eye on this page for a zine soon!
What we think you’ll need
- People to help create and maintain the garden
- A suitable location (water, sun, soil, minimal use, accessible, historical understanding)
- Basic gardening tools (Shovels and Wheelbarrows)
- Access to resources (soil, mulch, cardboard)
- Ideal resources; money, vehicle and trailer
People to help create and maintain the garden
- At the beginning a core crew to make sure the logistics of creating the garden and the immediate maintenance needs are taken care of is helpful. This crew should aim to distribute these responsibilities evenly throughout the garden community as soon as possible.
- Consider getting to know more local residents and neighbours before starting the garden.
Is the location suitable?
Important factors when choosing a location are sunlight, wind, temperature, topography, water and current land use.
- Water is life!!! Is there a water tap nearby? Sometimes they are underground and sometimes you need to use a special fitting to attach a hose. Lookout for water fountains and barbeques, often these will have additional water attachment points.
- How much sunlight? Does location have half day to full day of direct sunlight in summer and winter? Is it north facing?
- Where is the prevailing wind coming from? Do you need to build / plant windbreaks?
- Is the site steep? Thinking of aspect for sun and water drainage.
- How is the location used? Ideally the location should be in an area that is relatively unused, so you aren’t excluding existing activities such as a regular game of soccer, a bike path, a dog park etc.
Depending on how you choose to build your garden beds, it can be a good idea to do a free soil test to test for different kind of lead and heavy metals in the soil. Previous or current industrial areas commonly have harmful contaminants in the soil. In some areas, the council does not need to declare what the historical use of sites were, and commonly these sites have been abandoned and turned into parkland… another victory of money driven hierarchical governing systems, no accountability!
Basic gardening tools
Shovels and wheelbarrows will be needed for moving soil, mulch and other resources. Hoses will be needed for watering, a more permanent irrigated system can be setup for greater ease of watering. It can also be helpful to have mattocks, pitchforks, watering cans and materials to make signs and compost bays.
Accessing soil, mulch, cardboard and more…
Soil you will likely need to buy and will likely be the largest cost of creating and maintaining the garden, usually around $40 per cubic metre.
Mulch should be available for free to be picked up from council mulch dump spots, you can also call arborist companies who are often very happy to dump mulch right where you need it for free.
Cardboard is a easy cheap way to suppress grass and weeds, it can be helpful to get large pieces from shops throwing it out like bike shops. You want to get cardboard that doesn’t have wax, inks or stickers (stickers/tape can be removed by hand).
Ideal extra resources
Money is helpful for acquiring necessary resources like soil. We suggest setting up a shared bank account that people can contribute to through a fundraiser. Whilst encouraging people to donate as they feel, we think food should be free and not sold.
Vehicles are helpful for transporting any resources you need to and from a site.
Trailers are useful for transporting larger quantities of resources to and from a site such as mulch or soil.
We’d love to know how you go!
Let us know how you go and if you have any additional questions. We want to share experiences and learnings widely! We are anti-copyright 🙂