GUERRILLA GARDENING

Learning to produce our own food is both essential if we are to ever truly take control over our own lives, and is implicitly a threat to capitalism as it makes a start towards breaking free of the cycle of supply and demand, liberating us from the role of passive consumers alienated from a real understanding of the nature of the world around us and the most important aspects of our day to day survival.

Of course the first prerequisite for growing food is land, the acquisition of which is financially beyond the means of most of us, something the Ruling class have had sewn up for centuries, even long before the Enclosures Acts of the 1600’s. But there are always holes-spaces, in which we can move, call it the black economy, call it the green economy.

Apply a little vision to the land around you; railway embankments, back gardens, golf courses, car parks, overgrown bits of land at work-place and so on. Then give a little thought to clandestine cultivation, the only limits are those of your imagination; herbs that thrive on poor soils could be grown amongst the thistles, rose bay willow herbs and boodle on ‘desolate’ bomb-sites.

Even if squatting empty property in your area is not an option (hello Neighborhood Watch…) maybe the back garden can still be put to use with a bit of cunning and stealth, or maybe seldom visited corners of local parks and gardens or even churchyards? How about the flower beds that adorn your town centre if they’re not too well looked after, you could be growing your crops right in the heart of the consumer landscape of the burger bars, chain stores and supermarkets.

Such secret gardens could be maintained with the minimum of effort small amounts of compost could be carried in bags and weeds could be largely left alone except where they threaten to engulf your crop as they provide camouflage for your activities. Nor would you have to bother with orderly, tidy rows. A mornings cycle tour of a few favourite spots could supply you with a weeks supplies, especially if you take advantage of all the free food that grows wild nettles, ransoms, dandelions, chickweed, nuts, berries, and some mushrooms and fungi. Clandestine farmers are out there now. Why not join them in digging for revolution.

The article was taken from a booklet titled Land and Liberty by Graham Burnett and has been edited for brevity.