RE: Seed "Bombs"

H* A*

Laura:

I'd contact greenguerillas directly: http://www.greenguerillas.org (212)
674-8124. The best historian of the LES gardens, Sarah Ferguson, relates in
the following excerpt ( from her article, " A Brief History of  Grassroots
Greening on the Lower East Side," in  " Avant Gardening: Ecological Struggle
In The City & The World", Brooklyn: Autonomedia 1999) that  LES community
gardening has a more proactive history than  " flower balloons" would
suggest."

"Fed up with government inaction, in 1973 an impassioned artist named Liz
Christy and a band of like-minded acrivists called the Green Guerillas began
taking over abandoned lots on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Armed with
bolt-cutters and pickaxes , they conceived themselves as a strike force to
liberate the crumbling landscape around them....Undaunted, they moved to a
corner of Bowery and Houston where a few months earlier a couple of homeless
men had been found frozen to death in a cardboard box. "You could not have
found a more unlikely place to start a garden," recalls Bill Brunson, an
early Guerilla.  " At the time there were still all these men lined up along
the Bowery drinking wine and panhandling. To put up a garden there - in what
ws probably the ultimate slime spot in the city - that was unheard of."
...." They also lobbed 'Seed Green-Aids' - balloons or Christmas tree
ornaments filled with peat moss, fertilizer and wild flower seeds into
fenced-off lots and along highways and street medians in the five boroughs. 
"It was a form of civil disobediance," recalls Amos Taylor, another early
GG member. " We were basically saying to the government, if you won't do it,
we will." 

Community gardening is 50% gardening and 100% politcal, as I'm fond of
saying. It means bolt cutters, pickaxes and the political will to make a
garden happen and then to sustain it.

" Avant Gardening"  is available from Autonomedia :
http://www.autonomedia.org ; fax/phone ( 718) 963-2603. 

Everbest,

Adam Honigman

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Laura Berman [SMTP:laura@foodshare.net]
> Sent:	Wednesday, April 12, 2000 9:43 PM
> To:	ACGA listserve
> Subject:	[cg] Seed "Bombs"
> 
> I have been trying to track down the recipe for seed "bombs" that was
> originally developed by the  NYC Green Guerillas (I think). It involves
> putting seeds and other things into a balloon and then filling with water
> and heaving it into an area in need of some guerilla gardening. It is
> those
> other things that I'm not sure of and also any other  fine points in
> making
> and using  these guerilla gardening tools.
> And, if you have any other guerilla gardening tips, please share them.
> 
> Thanks,
> Laura
> 
> 
> =============================================
> Laura Berman
> FoodShare's Community Garden Programme Coordinator
> Chair, Toronto Community Garden Network
> phone:    (416) 392-1668
> fax:          (416) 392-6650
> email:    laura@foodshare.net
> email:    cgnetwork@foodshare.net
> www.foodshare.net
>  
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> community_garden maillist  -  community_garden@mallorn.com
> https://secure.mallorn.com/mailman/listinfo/community_garden

_______________________________________________
community_garden maillist  -  community_garden@mallorn.com
https://secure.mallorn.com/mailman/listinfo/community_garden