WEBVTT - How Guerrilla Gardening Works

0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:02.840
<v Speaker 1>Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.

0:00:03.160 --> 0:00:07.600
<v Speaker 1>It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know?

0:00:08.200 --> 0:00:12.639
<v Speaker 1>From House Stuffworks dot Com? Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

0:00:12.720 --> 0:00:15.920
<v Speaker 1>I'm Josh. Chuck's with me. Say hi, Chuck, Hi, and

0:00:15.960 --> 0:00:18.120
<v Speaker 1>I know it titillates Chuck when I say this, So,

0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:21.040
<v Speaker 1>welcome to Stuff you should Know. I love it. Ye

0:00:22.160 --> 0:00:24.960
<v Speaker 1>sixty episodes in and we're introducing the show as the show.

0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:27.320
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, well you know you got the training things.

0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:29.800
<v Speaker 1>Sometimes I like it. Yeah, pretty pretty soon I'll just

0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:32.200
<v Speaker 1>start making up new names for it. Will be like, wait,

0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:35.040
<v Speaker 1>did I down a little the right one? Yeah? Um, so,

0:00:35.159 --> 0:00:38.080
<v Speaker 1>Chuck as uh as I am usually want to do.

0:00:38.320 --> 0:00:41.880
<v Speaker 1>I have an anecdote from my past that will nicely

0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:44.680
<v Speaker 1>segue into what we should tell what we should talk

0:00:44.720 --> 0:00:46.680
<v Speaker 1>about today. I like these because they always I don't

0:00:46.720 --> 0:00:49.280
<v Speaker 1>know about these beforehand, I really don't, so they're always interesting.

0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:52.720
<v Speaker 1>This one's not, you know, by comparison, it's not that good,

0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:55.160
<v Speaker 1>So don't get your hopes. Okay, but um, you know,

0:00:55.160 --> 0:00:57.560
<v Speaker 1>when I was a slightly younger man in my early teens,

0:00:57.600 --> 0:01:01.080
<v Speaker 1>I had a friend, um named Jeremy, whose dad was

0:01:01.080 --> 0:01:04.400
<v Speaker 1>a firefighter, and here was this tough guy, but he, um,

0:01:04.440 --> 0:01:09.560
<v Speaker 1>he also was fairly cultivated, you know, cultured um and uh,

0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:13.400
<v Speaker 1>he and his friends, some of them firefighter buddies, used

0:01:13.400 --> 0:01:15.440
<v Speaker 1>to go out at night and engage in what they

0:01:15.480 --> 0:01:18.840
<v Speaker 1>called clumping all right now, and I've never heard of

0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:22.160
<v Speaker 1>it before or since. I think they made it up actually, um,

0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:27.200
<v Speaker 1>but clumping involved going into somebody's yard and stealing plants

0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:29.560
<v Speaker 1>that you liked and then taking them back to your

0:01:29.640 --> 0:01:34.320
<v Speaker 1>yard and planning them there. Um a firefighter to do

0:01:34.360 --> 0:01:38.120
<v Speaker 1>anything exactly. Yeah, well, you know, if he's saving lives,

0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:40.160
<v Speaker 1>I think he can kind of get something of a past.

0:01:40.240 --> 0:01:44.160
<v Speaker 1>But it always struck me as a little um wrong.

0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:48.960
<v Speaker 1>Maybe it is stealing quite clearly, um. But but at

0:01:49.000 --> 0:01:51.480
<v Speaker 1>the same time, it's like it's even more than stealing,

0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:54.400
<v Speaker 1>you know. It's it's not like stealing somebody's cell phone.

0:01:54.440 --> 0:01:56.920
<v Speaker 1>You don't have anything really attached that except you know,

0:01:57.000 --> 0:01:59.280
<v Speaker 1>maybe your your your phone book in it. This is,

0:01:59.360 --> 0:02:02.000
<v Speaker 1>you know, somebody is cultivating a garden. Somebody's taking the

0:02:02.040 --> 0:02:05.040
<v Speaker 1>time to to plan this and intend to it, and

0:02:05.360 --> 0:02:07.760
<v Speaker 1>now all of a sudden there's huge holes filled with

0:02:08.080 --> 0:02:10.840
<v Speaker 1>stealing their time. You're stealing their or their money that

0:02:10.880 --> 0:02:13.919
<v Speaker 1>they put into the planting. Sure now comes to the segue.

0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:15.760
<v Speaker 1>You want to know what the opposite of that is.

0:02:16.400 --> 0:02:20.600
<v Speaker 1>I have a good feeling guerrilla gardening. That's precisely right.

0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:22.720
<v Speaker 1>And and chuck, Now, I know there has been um

0:02:22.840 --> 0:02:27.320
<v Speaker 1>some discrepancy in the very recent past. We're talking uh

0:02:27.400 --> 0:02:30.880
<v Speaker 1>the guerrilla as in like guerrilla warfare, right right, not

0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:37.080
<v Speaker 1>the apes gardening girllas. Aren't apes, are they? I can

0:02:37.120 --> 0:02:39.440
<v Speaker 1>never remember. I don't know, I know the primates. Let's

0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:43.280
<v Speaker 1>go with that, okay. Um, so yeah, we're talking guerrilla gardening.

0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:46.720
<v Speaker 1>And it is pretty much what it sounds like. It's

0:02:46.760 --> 0:02:52.480
<v Speaker 1>you know, making stealth maneuvers into uh usually untended areas

0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:56.639
<v Speaker 1>or neglected or overgrown vacant lots, that that kind of thing,

0:02:57.120 --> 0:03:00.960
<v Speaker 1>and you know, tilling the soil, weed it and planning

0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:04.000
<v Speaker 1>new stuff. Yeah. I think this is really really cool.

0:03:04.200 --> 0:03:07.359
<v Speaker 1>I do too, because it's subversive, which you know, I'm

0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:11.960
<v Speaker 1>I'm very hit to, like you know, the smart mobs thing, right. Um,

0:03:12.040 --> 0:03:16.160
<v Speaker 1>but it doesn't harm anyone, doesn't harm anyone, know, as

0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:18.680
<v Speaker 1>a matter of fact, that makes the the world or

0:03:18.720 --> 0:03:21.080
<v Speaker 1>the city or wherever you live. And you're doing this

0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:24.360
<v Speaker 1>a much better place, although some people still try and

0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:26.799
<v Speaker 1>shut it down, which we'll get to later. Yeah, good,

0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:29.720
<v Speaker 1>because I got a great line for that. Yeah. So, um,

0:03:30.080 --> 0:03:31.959
<v Speaker 1>you want to give a little background, a little history

0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:36.120
<v Speaker 1>on guerilla gardening. Yeah, sure. Originally I believe it started

0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:39.200
<v Speaker 1>in New York City in the early seventies, the modern

0:03:39.480 --> 0:03:42.080
<v Speaker 1>the modern version did, yes, right, Do you have info

0:03:42.160 --> 0:03:45.880
<v Speaker 1>on the ancient version? Apparently it goes back to sixty

0:03:46.000 --> 0:03:50.600
<v Speaker 1>nine when a guy named Gerard Winston Lee I believe

0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:53.160
<v Speaker 1>he's from Surrey, England. He started a group called the

0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:56.800
<v Speaker 1>Diggers and they were basically the first guerilla gardeners. They

0:03:56.840 --> 0:04:00.360
<v Speaker 1>just went into places that they didn't own, plots of

0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:03.400
<v Speaker 1>land they didn't known, and started planting. I wonder if

0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:07.600
<v Speaker 1>they were planting crops. Actually they were planning vegetables. Yeah. Well,

0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:09.960
<v Speaker 1>the modern version started in the early seventies in New

0:04:10.000 --> 0:04:13.080
<v Speaker 1>York and there was a resident there named Liz Christie,

0:04:13.600 --> 0:04:17.960
<v Speaker 1>and she founded the Green Guerrillas and they started hitting

0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:21.520
<v Speaker 1>up local lots and planting flowers. And the first one,

0:04:21.560 --> 0:04:25.040
<v Speaker 1>I believe was at the corner of a bower which

0:04:25.160 --> 0:04:27.440
<v Speaker 1>I know well. And did you know Bowery is actually

0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:30.960
<v Speaker 1>Dutch for farm. Really. Yeah, maybe that's why they picked it.

0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:34.400
<v Speaker 1>I found it on the the Green Gorilla's website. Cool. Yeah,

0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:39.240
<v Speaker 1>so they Christie and the Green Gorillas. Um actually kind

0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:42.560
<v Speaker 1>of had a hard fought struggle at first, that that

0:04:42.600 --> 0:04:44.920
<v Speaker 1>place at the corner of Bowery in Houston that had

0:04:45.120 --> 0:04:50.080
<v Speaker 1>little housing, sorry, that little neglected park that no one

0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:52.760
<v Speaker 1>cared about. All of a sudden, now that they're tending

0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:55.240
<v Speaker 1>to it and planning stuff. They had they had a

0:04:55.279 --> 0:04:57.320
<v Speaker 1>fight on their hands with with the city. I believe.

0:04:57.640 --> 0:04:59.800
<v Speaker 1>I didn't realize that. Actually, yeah, they had. They had

0:04:59.800 --> 0:05:03.039
<v Speaker 1>some thing of a struggle, and um, finally the city,

0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:05.680
<v Speaker 1>the city gave in, saw the error of its ways

0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:08.760
<v Speaker 1>after about a year and legitimized it and it became

0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:11.720
<v Speaker 1>this community garden. Now it's a memorial park dedicated to

0:05:11.800 --> 0:05:14.240
<v Speaker 1>Liz Christie. Very cool in New York. I have to

0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:17.640
<v Speaker 1>go by. But she was the one who originated seed bombs. Yeah,

0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:20.159
<v Speaker 1>these are really cool, and originally she was she was

0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:25.120
<v Speaker 1>using um condoms filled with tomato seeds or some some

0:05:25.200 --> 0:05:27.440
<v Speaker 1>kind of seeds and like compost and then you know,

0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:29.920
<v Speaker 1>hurling them into a vacant lot or something like interesting

0:05:29.960 --> 0:05:33.240
<v Speaker 1>and the condom would disintegrate. No, no, no, so they

0:05:33.240 --> 0:05:36.120
<v Speaker 1>didn't work. I mean it worked. I think the water

0:05:36.160 --> 0:05:38.320
<v Speaker 1>would get get into it or something like that, or

0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:40.880
<v Speaker 1>maybe she slid it. But even after the stuff planted,

0:05:41.200 --> 0:05:44.839
<v Speaker 1>you still have a prophylactic um laying around, which really

0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:47.240
<v Speaker 1>bacons up a lot. You know. Have you been to

0:05:47.279 --> 0:05:49.440
<v Speaker 1>New York City though I have, but not since I

0:05:49.480 --> 0:05:51.919
<v Speaker 1>was young. Yeah, the condom on the street isn't the

0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:54.719
<v Speaker 1>strangest thing right now, I've seen quite a few. But

0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:56.880
<v Speaker 1>there are greener ways to do it, right, Yeah. I

0:05:56.920 --> 0:06:01.760
<v Speaker 1>think nowadays the seed bomb is evolved into a clay

0:06:02.440 --> 0:06:05.360
<v Speaker 1>mixture with like some clay and compost and seed and

0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:07.839
<v Speaker 1>water and you just form into a little ball and

0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:09.800
<v Speaker 1>you can just literally you can toss these from your car.

0:06:10.440 --> 0:06:13.039
<v Speaker 1>And it has to be something obviously that can can

0:06:13.200 --> 0:06:15.920
<v Speaker 1>grow from not having to dig and plant it into

0:06:15.920 --> 0:06:19.400
<v Speaker 1>the ground. But yeah, it's a seed bomb. Pretty cool. Yeah,

0:06:19.480 --> 0:06:22.600
<v Speaker 1>And apparently what like they they're dried out and then

0:06:22.600 --> 0:06:26.720
<v Speaker 1>when it rains, the thing kind of reconstitutes or dissolves,

0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:29.240
<v Speaker 1>and then the seeds are spread and there's this compost

0:06:29.320 --> 0:06:31.600
<v Speaker 1>that that feeds it. Right, Ideally, I think the seed

0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:34.840
<v Speaker 1>bombs are done either in the rain or before it rains,

0:06:34.920 --> 0:06:37.000
<v Speaker 1>right before it rains. That's very cool. Yeah. And and

0:06:37.040 --> 0:06:39.040
<v Speaker 1>like you said, you can throw them from a moving car,

0:06:39.520 --> 0:06:41.360
<v Speaker 1>you know, just kind of drive around and you're just

0:06:41.680 --> 0:06:45.960
<v Speaker 1>you know, guerrilla gardening, guerrilla gardening, spreading beauty. Yeah, exactly.

0:06:46.160 --> 0:06:49.520
<v Speaker 1>And I saw a cool video on the Guardians website

0:06:49.960 --> 0:06:53.160
<v Speaker 1>of a guy named Richard Reynolds. Yeah, did you see

0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:56.240
<v Speaker 1>him making seed bombs? Yeah, there's there's a great how

0:06:56.279 --> 0:06:58.480
<v Speaker 1>to video if if any of you guys out there

0:06:58.480 --> 0:07:00.960
<v Speaker 1>in podcast land or interest it in making your own

0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:04.000
<v Speaker 1>seed bombs, there's a great how to step by step

0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:07.440
<v Speaker 1>video um with Richard Reynolds. And you're absolutely right, he

0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:09.440
<v Speaker 1>is a cool dude. He's a very cool dude. Um.

0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:11.840
<v Speaker 1>While we're on Richard, he's he was the founder of

0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:15.320
<v Speaker 1>the London grilla guardening movement from what I understand, and

0:07:15.320 --> 0:07:18.920
<v Speaker 1>has a great website Gorilla Guardening dot org. Yeah, it's

0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:21.680
<v Speaker 1>pretty much like the definitive guerrilla gardening website. I know,

0:07:21.720 --> 0:07:23.960
<v Speaker 1>in a Google search of the typing guerilla gardening, it's

0:07:24.120 --> 0:07:26.280
<v Speaker 1>definitely the first one that comes up, which is because

0:07:26.280 --> 0:07:29.280
<v Speaker 1>seems the most legitimate as well. Yeah, um, he actually

0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:31.200
<v Speaker 1>I read a cool thing on his website today where

0:07:31.240 --> 0:07:33.640
<v Speaker 1>he um had been taken care of. It may have

0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:36.680
<v Speaker 1>been his own apartment complex. It was the Horse and

0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:39.440
<v Speaker 1>Elephant or the Buggy and something around right. I love

0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:43.400
<v Speaker 1>the names for the pretty cool. It's very cool. So yeah,

0:07:43.440 --> 0:07:45.600
<v Speaker 1>he was had been taking care of his own garden

0:07:45.640 --> 0:07:50.120
<v Speaker 1>there and eventually got um. The residents had been paying

0:07:51.000 --> 0:07:57.080
<v Speaker 1>uh money towards maintenance, lawn maintenance, and basically the residents

0:07:57.080 --> 0:07:59.120
<v Speaker 1>started to say, hey, this is kind of fraudulent. This

0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:01.920
<v Speaker 1>guy has been doing this free. We're paying money for nothing.

0:08:02.480 --> 0:08:05.600
<v Speaker 1>And he actually got refunded. Uh. The ninety residents he

0:08:05.640 --> 0:08:07.960
<v Speaker 1>had their money refunded for like a three year period

0:08:08.760 --> 0:08:11.480
<v Speaker 1>was about a hundred pounds, and every everything was going swimmingly.

0:08:11.960 --> 0:08:15.400
<v Speaker 1>After that, he had um some sort of at least

0:08:15.480 --> 0:08:22.080
<v Speaker 1>verbal consensus between the paid groundkeepers, the building's owners, and

0:08:22.200 --> 0:08:25.400
<v Speaker 1>himself that he would take care of this this area,

0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:28.040
<v Speaker 1>this common area. And he's doing a heck of a job.

0:08:28.040 --> 0:08:30.280
<v Speaker 1>The guy has you know, he's he's a great gardener

0:08:30.320 --> 0:08:34.000
<v Speaker 1>to begin with. UM. But as long as he gave

0:08:34.080 --> 0:08:38.559
<v Speaker 1>the management a month a month's notice that he was

0:08:38.600 --> 0:08:41.520
<v Speaker 1>going to stop so they could get that company back

0:08:41.559 --> 0:08:44.720
<v Speaker 1>in there to do their you know, terrible job of

0:08:44.720 --> 0:08:47.320
<v Speaker 1>taking care of it. So he's got this agreement and

0:08:47.320 --> 0:08:49.640
<v Speaker 1>then all of a sudden things just go sideways and

0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:53.400
<v Speaker 1>he's got problems again. And the one problem, you know,

0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:55.839
<v Speaker 1>it's it's mind boggling to me. If you have a

0:08:55.920 --> 0:08:58.400
<v Speaker 1>vacant lot, if you have a common area, if there's

0:08:58.440 --> 0:09:02.560
<v Speaker 1>a place where, um, it's just being neglected, and then

0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:07.840
<v Speaker 1>somebody very uh, very benevolently just starts taking care of it,

0:09:08.000 --> 0:09:12.120
<v Speaker 1>plant it. What's the problem. But the problem is is

0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:17.080
<v Speaker 1>there is guerrilla gardening also kind of inadvertently serves as

0:09:17.080 --> 0:09:19.520
<v Speaker 1>a slap in the face to people who are very

0:09:19.559 --> 0:09:22.880
<v Speaker 1>interested in rules and procedure and you know, like they're

0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:26.600
<v Speaker 1>County Cordon code Enforcement's phone number by heart, and that's

0:09:26.600 --> 0:09:28.640
<v Speaker 1>all you have to do. It's called code enforcement. And

0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:33.080
<v Speaker 1>all of a sudden, this this great act is now criminal,

0:09:33.679 --> 0:09:35.640
<v Speaker 1>which it wasn't the first place, but everybody kind of

0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:37.720
<v Speaker 1>looks the other way, right. Did you see the video

0:09:37.800 --> 0:09:39.840
<v Speaker 1>on his site where they got shut down? No? I

0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:41.720
<v Speaker 1>didn't see them. Yeah, it's on YouTube as well, and

0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:44.160
<v Speaker 1>it's on his website. And they were actually tending to

0:09:44.320 --> 0:09:47.720
<v Speaker 1>a an area underneath a street sign I believe in

0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:51.120
<v Speaker 1>London on a corner and uh at night, usually it's

0:09:51.120 --> 0:09:55.040
<v Speaker 1>gardening at night. Uh. Thanks to r M, we can

0:09:55.120 --> 0:09:57.240
<v Speaker 1>give them a little shout out and they do this

0:09:57.320 --> 0:09:59.640
<v Speaker 1>undercover the night quite often. And the cops came by

0:09:59.800 --> 0:10:02.080
<v Speaker 1>and they shut him down. It's all on tape and

0:10:02.120 --> 0:10:04.080
<v Speaker 1>he gets into a little minor argument with them that

0:10:04.160 --> 0:10:07.679
<v Speaker 1>they're beautifying the area and the cops uh. And of

0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:10.199
<v Speaker 1>course these are cops in London, so it's all very polite.

0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:12.400
<v Speaker 1>You know. In the United States, that would go down

0:10:12.440 --> 0:10:15.560
<v Speaker 1>much differently. And eventually they you know, they actually left

0:10:15.559 --> 0:10:18.600
<v Speaker 1>because they threatened to arrest them and um, but they

0:10:18.600 --> 0:10:20.240
<v Speaker 1>snuck back a couple of hours later and finish the

0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:23.120
<v Speaker 1>job for them. Yeah. And and yes, I noticed there's

0:10:23.200 --> 0:10:26.800
<v Speaker 1>like clips and and um photo documentaries of like him

0:10:26.920 --> 0:10:30.240
<v Speaker 1>all over the world doing like guerrilla gardening. Yeah, and

0:10:30.280 --> 0:10:32.000
<v Speaker 1>it is all over the world. I saw that there

0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:34.800
<v Speaker 1>were sites in German and Australia, and here in the

0:10:34.880 --> 0:10:37.000
<v Speaker 1>United States are a lot of groups. And like you

0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:38.760
<v Speaker 1>were pointing out, we don't or I pointed out, we

0:10:38.760 --> 0:10:42.120
<v Speaker 1>don't have one here in Atlanta. Um. But you mentioned

0:10:42.160 --> 0:10:44.200
<v Speaker 1>that you don't necessarily have to have a group, an

0:10:44.280 --> 0:10:46.240
<v Speaker 1>organized group that does this in a website. You can

0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:47.920
<v Speaker 1>you can do it on your own. Yeah, I mean,

0:10:48.200 --> 0:10:51.000
<v Speaker 1>it doesn't get much more low tech than than seed bombs,

0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:53.640
<v Speaker 1>you know. And you could, like you said, just drive around,

0:10:53.720 --> 0:10:56.240
<v Speaker 1>throw them out the window, see what happens. But yeah,

0:10:56.240 --> 0:10:58.240
<v Speaker 1>you could go so far as to organize a group

0:10:58.520 --> 0:11:01.400
<v Speaker 1>right well, which is kind of the cool thing I think. Um,

0:11:01.440 --> 0:11:04.600
<v Speaker 1>it goes a little bit beyond just the gardening and beautification.

0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:07.160
<v Speaker 1>A lot of times, it's bringing the community together in

0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:09.719
<v Speaker 1>a cool way, just like when you there's groups that

0:11:09.760 --> 0:11:12.880
<v Speaker 1>go around and pick up trash that kind of thing. Yeah. Now, um,

0:11:12.920 --> 0:11:16.600
<v Speaker 1>I know on reynolds site there's something called troop digs.

0:11:16.600 --> 0:11:18.960
<v Speaker 1>I think it's like the forum you can go and

0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:21.920
<v Speaker 1>find out who's digging in your area right where they're

0:11:21.920 --> 0:11:23.560
<v Speaker 1>going to be that kind of thing, or who you

0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:27.280
<v Speaker 1>need to contact. Um and and some people from what

0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:31.160
<v Speaker 1>I've read about reynalds, he uh is completely into beautification.

0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:34.959
<v Speaker 1>That his only motive. But there's there's also a very

0:11:34.960 --> 0:11:39.040
<v Speaker 1>political aspect to it. To grilla gardening. Um, it's all

0:11:39.120 --> 0:11:42.720
<v Speaker 1>it can be a form of protest of you know, capitalism,

0:11:42.760 --> 0:11:45.360
<v Speaker 1>of of urban blight. That that kind of thing, the

0:11:45.400 --> 0:11:49.320
<v Speaker 1>city won't take care of itself, so we will, right exactly. Um.

0:11:49.720 --> 0:11:52.120
<v Speaker 1>And also of like food costs, that can be a

0:11:52.160 --> 0:11:55.440
<v Speaker 1>protest of that, right. Um. And actually there's this guy

0:11:55.800 --> 0:12:01.439
<v Speaker 1>in I believe Boulder, Colorado this past summer's name was

0:12:01.480 --> 0:12:04.520
<v Speaker 1>Scott Hoffenburg, and he got slept with the two thousand

0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:07.600
<v Speaker 1>dollar a day fine for guerrilla gardening. Really, and the

0:12:07.640 --> 0:12:10.559
<v Speaker 1>reason he was doing it, he said, was because food

0:12:10.559 --> 0:12:12.240
<v Speaker 1>prices had gotten out of hand. So he in a

0:12:12.280 --> 0:12:14.640
<v Speaker 1>neighbor took up this little right away, you know, the

0:12:14.640 --> 0:12:17.560
<v Speaker 1>little strips in between the sidewalk in the street. They

0:12:17.640 --> 0:12:21.520
<v Speaker 1>just planted a bunch of cucumbers and tomatoes and squash

0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:25.160
<v Speaker 1>and all this kind of thing. And um that some

0:12:25.160 --> 0:12:29.240
<v Speaker 1>some one of those people with rules and procedures, you know,

0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:32.959
<v Speaker 1>called the co enforcement. So luckily the county said they're

0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:34.400
<v Speaker 1>going to try to work with the guy. And I

0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:36.880
<v Speaker 1>never I didn't hear what happened, but I have a

0:12:36.880 --> 0:12:41.040
<v Speaker 1>feeling that if you're a guerrilla gardener and you're gardening

0:12:41.080 --> 0:12:44.200
<v Speaker 1>actually right out front of your house and they're threatening

0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:45.960
<v Speaker 1>a two thousand dollar fine, that would probably go a

0:12:45.960 --> 0:12:48.280
<v Speaker 1>long way to get you to comply. With those rules

0:12:48.320 --> 0:12:51.000
<v Speaker 1>and procedures. Yeah, you know, I'd like to pick someone's brain.

0:12:51.080 --> 0:12:53.679
<v Speaker 1>He was really against us. Yeah, I want to meet

0:12:53.720 --> 0:12:55.960
<v Speaker 1>the person who sees what's going on and goes home

0:12:56.000 --> 0:13:00.320
<v Speaker 1>and it's just, yeah, dare they plant those flowers right there? Yeah?

0:13:00.440 --> 0:13:02.920
<v Speaker 1>I'm just I'm curious, what's what's happening there? Yeah, And

0:13:03.040 --> 0:13:04.600
<v Speaker 1>I don't think I could explain it. But I know

0:13:04.679 --> 0:13:06.439
<v Speaker 1>for a fact that I've met people like that before.

0:13:06.880 --> 0:13:09.240
<v Speaker 1>It's always a little unsettling. These are probably the same

0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:13.079
<v Speaker 1>people that are the neighborhood associations that just flip out

0:13:13.080 --> 0:13:15.400
<v Speaker 1>when someone's mailbox looks different than the rest. And yeah,

0:13:15.520 --> 0:13:17.120
<v Speaker 1>those those people are a lot of fun. I used

0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:19.120
<v Speaker 1>to have a friend who lived in my subdivision. His

0:13:19.240 --> 0:13:23.160
<v Speaker 1>family routinely got um letters from the neighborhood association to

0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:25.440
<v Speaker 1>you know, move the water skis out from in front

0:13:25.440 --> 0:13:27.840
<v Speaker 1>of the garage and that kind of thing. It's crazy.

0:13:27.960 --> 0:13:31.760
<v Speaker 1>It was weird. Um so but okay, so Chuck. Both

0:13:31.800 --> 0:13:34.439
<v Speaker 1>of us have expressed an interest in guerilla gardening. Let's

0:13:34.440 --> 0:13:36.760
<v Speaker 1>say somebody who's listening to us, you know, wants to

0:13:36.800 --> 0:13:40.520
<v Speaker 1>get started. Not everybody's against this. And actually, from what

0:13:40.559 --> 0:13:44.839
<v Speaker 1>I understand. Um, local nurseries have a tendency to really

0:13:44.880 --> 0:13:48.199
<v Speaker 1>kind of support this kind of thing. Yeah, they have

0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:51.520
<v Speaker 1>dead plants nobody's gonna buy anyway that may or may

0:13:51.559 --> 0:13:53.360
<v Speaker 1>not come back to life. Why not? So what what

0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:55.400
<v Speaker 1>should what should people look for when they're doing this?

0:13:55.800 --> 0:13:57.320
<v Speaker 1>But I just want to point out this very nice

0:13:57.480 --> 0:14:00.760
<v Speaker 1>imperson impersonation but have tol you just like to help me? Yeah,

0:14:00.760 --> 0:14:03.520
<v Speaker 1>I wish people could have seen that. Um. Well, first

0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:05.280
<v Speaker 1>thing you want to do is find out, you know,

0:14:05.360 --> 0:14:08.120
<v Speaker 1>identify your location of where you want to do this.

0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:11.000
<v Speaker 1>So look for, like you said, sometimes the little strips

0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:13.559
<v Speaker 1>of land between the street and the sidewalk that are

0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:15.800
<v Speaker 1>full of trash or grown over with weeds. Those are

0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:18.840
<v Speaker 1>good spots corners that have those. And then you want to,

0:14:19.640 --> 0:14:22.400
<v Speaker 1>uh find out what kind of plants you want. Uh,

0:14:22.440 --> 0:14:26.000
<v Speaker 1>indigenous species are good, non invasive, non invasive. You don't

0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:28.440
<v Speaker 1>want to like plant the new cud zoo or anything. Right,

0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:32.360
<v Speaker 1>which for you non Southerners is a very fast growing

0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:36.320
<v Speaker 1>week just that just takes over absolutely everything. Right, It

0:14:36.400 --> 0:14:38.560
<v Speaker 1>can kill an eight foot oak tree in a year

0:14:38.600 --> 0:14:42.160
<v Speaker 1>or two, right, Thank you Japan for that exactly. Uh. So, yeah,

0:14:42.160 --> 0:14:43.800
<v Speaker 1>you want to pick out the right plants, and you also,

0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:45.680
<v Speaker 1>I mean you're you're gonna be It's not like you

0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:48.560
<v Speaker 1>just plant this and then you just leave forever. I mean,

0:14:48.640 --> 0:14:50.040
<v Speaker 1>if you really want to do it right, you want

0:14:50.040 --> 0:14:52.640
<v Speaker 1>to upkeep it. So if you don't have a ton

0:14:52.680 --> 0:14:54.760
<v Speaker 1>of time, you want to pick some plants that require

0:14:54.760 --> 0:14:57.720
<v Speaker 1>as little upkeep as possible. Yeah, like drought resistant plants,

0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:00.960
<v Speaker 1>because the law of comments everybody he wants to take

0:15:01.000 --> 0:15:03.360
<v Speaker 1>as much out of this common pool and put as

0:15:03.400 --> 0:15:06.760
<v Speaker 1>little back as possible, well as far as economists would say.

0:15:07.560 --> 0:15:09.600
<v Speaker 1>Um so yeah, so if you have drought resistant plants,

0:15:09.640 --> 0:15:12.320
<v Speaker 1>you can, you know, leave it up to the universe

0:15:12.360 --> 0:15:14.920
<v Speaker 1>to take care of it. I hate that ad I know.

0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:18.880
<v Speaker 1>Uh so, uh yeah, you've got your plants, you've eat.

0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:20.360
<v Speaker 1>When you need to get your plants, you can ask

0:15:20.360 --> 0:15:22.560
<v Speaker 1>for donations, or you can buy him yourself if you've

0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:25.120
<v Speaker 1>got a extra cash, gather up a little team, or

0:15:25.120 --> 0:15:26.600
<v Speaker 1>if you just want to do it yourself, if it's

0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:29.200
<v Speaker 1>doable by yourself, and then you know, you go out.

0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:31.720
<v Speaker 1>A lot of people do it at night. Um here

0:15:31.720 --> 0:15:33.800
<v Speaker 1>in Atlanta, I think in my neighborhood, I could go

0:15:33.800 --> 0:15:34.960
<v Speaker 1>out in the middle of the day and no one

0:15:34.960 --> 0:15:37.680
<v Speaker 1>would do totally no same here, I think as well,

0:15:37.720 --> 0:15:40.240
<v Speaker 1>and there's plenty of lots around my house that I

0:15:40.280 --> 0:15:43.400
<v Speaker 1>could get to experise it. Let's do that. Well, maybe

0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:45.080
<v Speaker 1>we should, all right, and if any of you out

0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:48.600
<v Speaker 1>there interested in getting into guerrilla gardening, uh, we would

0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:52.160
<v Speaker 1>suggest checking out guerrilla Gardening dot org Richard Renald site.

0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:55.360
<v Speaker 1>He also has a book um based on the advice

0:15:55.440 --> 0:15:59.320
<v Speaker 1>of Chairman Mao and Shay Gavara, but about guerrilla gardening

0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:02.560
<v Speaker 1>in a of course, you would also be interested in

0:16:02.640 --> 0:16:05.680
<v Speaker 1>visiting our humble website. You can type in guerrilla gardening

0:16:06.040 --> 0:16:08.440
<v Speaker 1>in the search bar and how Stuff Works dot com

0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:09.760
<v Speaker 1>and Chuck, what do you have for us? Do we

0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:12.600
<v Speaker 1>have any listener mail? Yep, we have some listener mail.

0:16:12.720 --> 0:16:17.360
<v Speaker 1>Listener mail time. So this letter, Josh comes to us

0:16:17.440 --> 0:16:21.520
<v Speaker 1>from a lady named Leah Johnson, and uh, Leah says,

0:16:22.160 --> 0:16:25.400
<v Speaker 1>I liked your how Echo Anxiety Works article, and I

0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:28.280
<v Speaker 1>also liked how you mentioned the vulture vomit at the end. Oh, yes,

0:16:28.360 --> 0:16:31.200
<v Speaker 1>this is a good letter. I have, in fact been

0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:33.760
<v Speaker 1>puked on by a Turkey vulture and it was disgusting.

0:16:34.200 --> 0:16:36.720
<v Speaker 1>I was part of a raptor rehabilitation program, and we

0:16:36.720 --> 0:16:39.400
<v Speaker 1>had outdoor housing for them, which we cleaned out once

0:16:39.400 --> 0:16:41.440
<v Speaker 1>a week. Every time I went to get the turkey

0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:43.600
<v Speaker 1>vulture out so we could clean it out, or just

0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:46.080
<v Speaker 1>to give him some time outside, he'd panic and puke

0:16:46.160 --> 0:16:49.920
<v Speaker 1>all over the over the place, including on me. Unfortunately,

0:16:49.960 --> 0:16:52.440
<v Speaker 1>I always had on gloves when handling the bird, so

0:16:52.520 --> 0:16:54.800
<v Speaker 1>the acidity wasn't so much a problem as a terrible

0:16:54.800 --> 0:16:58.280
<v Speaker 1>smell from the bird of prey diet we were feeding him. Anyway.

0:16:58.320 --> 0:16:59.880
<v Speaker 1>Thanks for making my days better if I give me

0:16:59.880 --> 0:17:03.440
<v Speaker 1>something interesting to listen to, and YadA, YadA, YadA, we

0:17:03.560 --> 0:17:06.919
<v Speaker 1>love you. That's great. Well, Leah, because you send in

0:17:07.000 --> 0:17:11.280
<v Speaker 1>your listener email and uh, because of your selfless care

0:17:11.560 --> 0:17:14.600
<v Speaker 1>of birds of prey, we're gonna send you our set

0:17:14.680 --> 0:17:17.280
<v Speaker 1>of how stuff Work steak knives are you and yours?

0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:20.639
<v Speaker 1>We hope you enjoy them. And if anything else anyone

0:17:20.680 --> 0:17:22.679
<v Speaker 1>else out there wants to send us an email, you

0:17:22.720 --> 0:17:27.200
<v Speaker 1>can send it to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works

0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:34.320
<v Speaker 1>dot com. Send it for more on this and thousands

0:17:34.320 --> 0:17:39.560
<v Speaker 1>of other topics. Because at how stuff works dot com.

0:17:37.800 --> 0:17:42.280
<v Speaker 1>H brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.

0:17:42.600 --> 0:17:43.800
<v Speaker 1>It's ready, Are you