Guerrilla Gardening Chronicle: Willow Spiral on a Bronx Sidewalk
This month, my urban gardening adventures extended beyond the confines of community gardens and out into the streets.
I did so without local government permission and on my own accord. This was, as many call it, “guerrilla gardening.” Or as others have called, “illicit cultivation.” The former sounds more rebellious, so I’m going to go with that.
The result has been both beautiful and invigorating. I made this basket willow spiral all on my own. Two weeks later, each shrub looks alive and is planting roots.
In this article, I wanted to share the step-by-step process and the lessons I learned during this project.
Why Guerrilla Gardening?
The bottom line is that we need more plants, and especially cities need more plants. This is for all the reasons I wrote about in this article on why community gardens can save us.
Here are a few benefits of more plants in cities
- Better air quality
- Cooler temperatures (due to reducing the urban heat island effect)
- Reduced flood risks
- Less raw sewage dumped into waterways (a real thing)
- Improved soil quality
- Sucking carbon out of the air
- Improved mental health
- Improved physical health (offsets issues like asthma)
They’re one of the best public health and climate-supporting steps we can take, and we need more of them, everywhere.
Yet while I do support the democratic processes of advocating for changes, voting people in who will see our visions through, and protesting when they fail to live up to it, I also don’t see it as the only way to make change. In fact, our environmental politics has demonstrably failed, so I find it naive to place our full faith in the same institutions that caused these climate and public health crises.
By just taking action on my own, I do in a few hours what others would just let sit as a good idea for months or years (if it ever happens at all.)
Taking Action Showcases What’s Possible
Guerrilla gardening, and adding plants without government permission, can showcase to neighbors what’s possible. In some sense, yes, it circumvents the democratic process, yet also gives people an example, something to point to and say, “we want more of this.”
In that sense, I view these rogue, community actions as going hand-in-hand with scaling this through advocating by the democratic channels.
Guerrilla Gardening is a Hands-On Learning Tool
I’ve also learned more about plants and gardening myself. This is an area where I think hands-on work is the best way to learn. It also has increased my “plant awareness” in general.
I talked with the horticulturist at a local community garden in the Bronx, and we talked about how a problem he sees reflected in the garden is how people have very little plant awareness. We don’t view plants as living beings the same way we few animals and humans. Perhaps this contributes to our willingness, and blindness, to how much we’re destroying the planet.
Doing some gardening has shifted this for me. I see my willow trees the living beings worthy of love and respect that they are. Each time I see them I become more attuned to their needs.
And doing guerrilla gardening specifically, I now have a sort of a playbook for how to do it in the future. This will just be one, I’m sure, of many strategies. Because as I do more projects, maybe I’ll keep updating this article with more chronicles and ideas for you to try.
Step 1: Borrow From The Wisdom of Others (Take Their Ideas)
You’ve probably heard the expression, “Standing on the shoulders of giants.”
While this has a poetic ring to it, I like the way strength coach Mike Boyle says this in his blunt Massachusetts accent: “Figure out who is smarter than you. Steal their stuff.”
I would not have been able to make this willow spiral without first building one along with Aresh Javadi, an artist and activist here in New York City.
(I write about Aresh and his willow tree projects more in an upcoming piece.)
In fact, if it weren’t for Aresh, I wouldn’t even have had these willow shrubs, a species called the basket willow, which are ideal for making living designs like this.
For the past few years, Aresh has used these to make all sorts of huts, spirals, and other designs around New York City. He came up to the South Bronx, with a fresh bin of willows ready to plant, to help us finish a willow hut at Maria Sola community garden.
Aresh (yellow), garden steward Grant (purple), and myself (black) with a fun timelapse making a part of this willow hut.
When we finished we had plenty of extras. So we brought a bunch of them down to the Lower East Side, where Aresh had a vision for them.
We Built a Similar Spiral on The Lower East Together
I helped load them into a truck and we drove down to Children’s Magical Garden, the garden where he does most of his work. On the other side of the street there was an empty bed filled with trash.
He showed me the exact steps for making this. If you’re interested in this, please shoot me an email. I thought about writing a separate post with the exact step-by-step, but I figured that few people reading would have basket willows laying around to plant.
After we built one together on the Lower East Side, I had the knowledge and confidence to at least give it a shot in the South Bronx.
I even saw first-hand the right type of place to do this design, as any empty sidewalk bed would do. Fortunately, making this doesn’t take any special knowledge. I learned in an afternoon, and you can too. (It’s true, Aresh does have a magic touch to make them more symmetrical, but I feel like I got 80% of the way within a few hours.)
I Now Had The Tools to Save The Last of The Willows
Even including the ones we brought down to the Lowest East Side, we still had several dozen basket willows sitting in a bucket of water in the South Bronx.
But before I could do so, I had to find a home for them. I had to find some empty sidewalk bed and ideally somewhere that wouldn’t be at risk of getting torn out.
Step 2: Find a Home
At first, I thought it wouldn’t be so easy to find an empty bed close enough to the garden that would be practical and easy to check in on.
This turned out to be a wrong assumption.
The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, sometimes called the “frequency illusion,” explains that once we start thinking about something, we start to have the feeling of seeing them everywhere.
With our conscious mind in now on the lookout, what before would have passed by in oblivion before our eyes we now notice.
This happened to me with empty sidewalk beds. Now I see them everywhere. And I found a perfect option one block over from the garden.
In Front of a Local Favorite Restaurant Sat an Empty Bed
In front of Charlie’s Bar & Kitchen, I reasoned, would be ideal for several reasons. First it was only one block from the garden. I could use our same fire hydrant to fill up two watering cans and walk them over to water the willows.
Second, with their approval, it would now be a perfectly legal thing to do, with a much lower risk of the willows getting torn out. In New York City, the owners of buildings bear responsibility for maintaining the sidewalk in front, rather than the city. This plays to our advantage when it comes to guerrilla gardening because we can avoid city bureaucracy and get permission directly from owners.
Third, since it was a restaurant I thought I would be doin Charlie’s a favor. They had an empty sidewalk bed willed with garbage. I had an offer: replace that garbage with some cool trees.
Last, I knew in front of a neighborhood favorite like Charlie’s, lots of people would walk by and see the willow. This is important for step four.
I Walked Into Charlie’s Bar & Kitchen on a Late Sunday Afternoon
Yes, I would have to go talk to someone. I know my generation, stereotypically, is scared of approaching strangers.
I walked into Charlie’s Bar & Kitchen, where I’ve had two excellent meals before, and asked if they cared if I planted something. The waitress told me, “hang on two minutes.” Then, out came a man named Charlie, with an accent that I think was Australian.
We stepped outside on a warm September afternoon, and I told him the story briefly. We had these willows. They needed to get planted. This sidewalk bed is empty.
I showed him a picture of the one Aresh and I made the week before.
“Go for it,” Charlie told me. He was enthusiastically on board.
Step 3: Do The Thing
Immediately I went to the garden. I picked 20 willow tress that were still the most green and most likely to survive. I brought them over to the bed. I picked up the trash. I measured a pentagon. Then I made a deep hole (so they could grow plenty of roots) on each side of each point of the pentagon.
I planted two at a time, beginning to weave them into this pattern as I went.
As I weaved them, the shape began to come together. By the end I stepped back and smiled.
But I knew this would be an ongoing project, because now I had to keep them alive. Unfortunately, they’d been sitting in buckets of water for several weeks, so I wasn’t sure how well they’d hold up.
Before wrapping up for the day, I grab a few watering cans from the garden, filled them up at the fire hydrant, and watered the newly planted willows.
I remembered what Aresh told me, “They love water.” I made sure to go over every day and water them over the next week.
Almost two weeks later, they’re still green at the bottom of each shrub. Some of them have even sprouted some subtle new leaves.
Step 4: Promote and Expand
As I’ve stepped into my journey as a climate activist, I’ve thought a lot about the debate between individual action vs systemic change. I’ve come to see that it’s both, and this is a great example of why.
First, I have no illusions that my willow spiral will stop fossil fuel companies from continuing to destroy the earth. However, on a small scale, what I didn’t mattered everything to these 20 willow shrubs. Without my actions, they would not be alive right now.
Second, there is no expanding without starting somewhere. There is no reshaping the built environment in New York City, and the whole world to be cleaner and healthier for plants and animals alike unless we just start.
Passively, the hope is that as people walk by Charlie’s and see it, consciously or not, they’ll come to appreciate it. Maybe a few people will pause.
When we talk about bigger plans to do this is 50 different sidewalk beds with a more organized grant approved by the city (these plans exist), neighbors will be more excited for it and more likely to support us.
We now have an example. I have made a point to talk about this with people in the garden and other neighbors. Not only to showcase it, but also to open the door to talk about broader plans. It’s a conversation starter about something we can all agree on: that New York City needs more plants.
Katherine Hayhoe in her book Saving Us writes about how one of the most important steps we can do to fight climate change is talk about it.
Having something physical to point to as an example makes it much easier to plant little seeds into other people about the power of scaling projects like this.
This Isn’t Just About Gardening
It doesn’t have to be gardening, of course. Our communities and cities need so much.
By taking action, I find myself more inspired to lead, to do more, to talk and write about all of this. This inspiration in turn has led me to talk more action. It’s a positive feedback loop.
When I get caught up in the policy arguments and the practicality of fighting climate change, I find myself go into the doom and gloom. Even if for my own mental health, projects like this are a big boost.
Other Action-First Suggestions to Help Save the World
I asked ChatGPT for some ideas and here’s what our AI overlords came up with.
- Trash Cleanup: Organizing or simply joining a local cleanup effort can be as spontaneous as bringing a trash bag on your daily walk. You don’t need an official group; you can just start picking up litter in your neighborhood or at a local park. This simple act improves the environment and inspires others to do the same. (Note from David: This is something we do around the garden as well.)
- Community Building: No official permission is required to meet up somewhere to start something that benefits those around you.
- Food Rescue: Volunteer with food rescue groups or start a local initiative to collect excess food from restaurants, grocery stores, or even farms, and redistribute it to those in need. This helps tackle food waste while addressing hunger.
- Street Art for Awareness: Similar to guerrilla gardening, street art (like chalk art or wheat-paste posters) can raise awareness about social or environmental issues. Whether it’s highlighting climate change, urban blight, or local activism, you can use art to provoke thought and encourage action.
- Bike Repair Stations: Installing free bike repair stations or offering bike tune-up days in urban areas can support cyclists and encourage more sustainable transportation. If you’ve got the skills, it’s a great way to contribute to the local community.
- Mutual Aid Networks: Creating a mutual aid group where neighbors exchange services, goods, or skills (such as childcare, gardening help, or meal prep) fosters local resilience and reduces reliance on traditional systems.
- Public Space Improvements: From painting over graffiti to planting wildflowers in neglected lots, people can engage in small projects that beautify or reimagine urban spaces without waiting for government permission or funding.
Where Can We Take Action Now? Where Can We (Literally or Otherwise) Plant a Seed?
This is the founding story of the community gardens in New York City. Tthey built these incredible oases in spaces that were once abandoned by the city. They did so without government permission. They just began gardening on empty lots. Decades later and through many hard-won fight, most of them now have legal protection. Some are managed by a Parks Department program, others are owned by land trusts.
Join The Movements That Already Exist
Fortunately, there are plenty of people already taking action, in countless forms. Peter Gelderloos says near the end of his book The Solutions Are Already Here, that “When we look around us to see who is already fighting, we are breaking with the mentality of passively.” When we see who’s fighting, we’re encouraged to go fight too.
Gelderloos continues, “Who can we help? What living communities—human and non-human—in our territory are most at risk, most in need of additional resources in order to adapt and protect themselves?” This will also seed clues for places to join the fight.
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