A review by octavia_cade
Get Guerrilla Gardening: A Handbook to Planting in Public Places by Ellen Miles

hopeful informative inspiring fast-paced

4.0

I'm not sure I've shelved a book under both the "plants" and "politics" tags before, but there should be more of them. This is a great beginner's guide to guerilla gardening: the act of planting in neglected public spaces, such as empty lots and the little spaces at the bottom of sidewalk trees. It's particularly good in that it's so thorough, focusing not on the best ways to determine suitable planting, but the importance of local action, of gardening as acts of resistance, of getting people onside and how to deal with any resultant complaints. The repeated themes of localisation, resilience, sustainability, and social inclusion are welcome, and all the facts about the benefits of nature on social activity are well-referenced.

There's also a number of short case studies. I would have liked to see a few more of these, to be honest, but there's still a decent range of illustrations that indicate just how many options the guerilla gardener has to increase the green spaces around them.