{"id":1934,"date":"2016-08-15T06:20:47","date_gmt":"2016-08-15T14:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=1934"},"modified":"2016-08-15T06:21:34","modified_gmt":"2016-08-15T14:21:34","slug":"gardens-of-adversity-gardens-of-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/gardens-of-adversity-gardens-of-hope\/","title":{"rendered":"Gardens of Adversity; Gardens of Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>Some things are universal\u2014or nearly so–and show up in every culture.\u00a0 Chicken soup is one of them, even if the \u201cchicken\u201d in the soup is some other variety of fowl.\u00a0 Gardens are another.\u00a0 The urge to garden has remained strong through civilization\u2019s\u00a0 many travails, including wars, natural disasters, dislocation and urbanization.\u00a0 The deliberate cultivation of previously wild plants probably began when someone who wanted a reliable food supply decided to try growing, rather than foraging for food.\u00a0 Eventually humans warmed to the idea of growing plants specifically for natural beauty. Along the way, a small subgroup of gardeners with more hubris than wisdom, used horticulture to demonstrate their abilities to control Nature.\u00a0 Of course, Nature always wins, but hubris\u2014in the garden and elsewhere–persists like poison ivy.<\/p>\n

The Nature controllers may impress with their tricks, manicured plants and fantastic structures, but it is really the plain dirt gardens who make the world better.\u00a0 I thought of this when I read a review of a short English book, Gardens Behind the Lines, 1914-1918, <\/em>by Anne Powell.\u00a0 The book, which is an expansion of an article that first appeared in the British journal, Hortus, <\/em>describes the gardens and plantings made by soldiers amidst the numbing brutality of World War I.\u00a0 The conflict, now fading into the haze of history, was notable for the number of destructive weapons and tools used for the first time.\u00a0 These included barbed wire, machine guns, tanks, large-scale trench warfare and poison gas.\u00a0 When the shooting finally stopped, the death toll included nine million soldiers and seven million civilians.\u00a0 Many more people in both categories were grievously wounded but survived, often with what was then called \u201cshell shock\u201d and would now be classified as post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD.<\/p>\n

But gardening persisted in the face of barbarity, with the native plants that were transplanted around encampments complementing the seed-grown species like ornamental sweet peas, stocks and pansies, tenderly raised from seeds sent by friends and relatives.\u00a0 Anne Powell is English and she focuses on the efforts of British troops, for whom the plants and flowers were a reminder of home.\u00a0 Tending the beds created around billets, near flooded-out trenches and beside abandoned buildings, was also therapeutic for men and not a few women who were exposed daily to carnage and the prospect of imminent death.<\/p>\n

The irony of course, was that the gardens\u2019 creators were inevitably redeployed, wounded or killed in action and their little gardens abandoned.\u00a0 I like the quote, from British soldier, Lieutenant Edwin Campion Vaughan, who, when notified that he would be reassigned to another area, left his plants in the hopes that \u201csomeone will get the benefit of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

World War I may be a century in the past, but we still face a world full of violence, hatred, environmental degradation and other ills.\u00a0 Plants are not a panacea, but they are a civilizing force.\u00a0 I am always inspired by the stories of the so-called \u201cguerilla gardeners\u201d\u2014dedicated horticulturists who grow plants in all kinds of waste spaces, from the edges of parking lots to triangular traffic islands in the middle of busy intersections.\u00a0 The constant is that the gardens or plantings are created and tended without the permission of the authorities or the individual entities that own the spaces.\u00a0 If those spaces are fenced off and locked up, the guerillas may bombard them with compressed balls of seeds and dirt that can be tossed over barriers and left to germinate and bloom.\u00a0 The seeds are usually those of tough, no-fuss annuals and the results are islets of civility in oceans of abandoned soil.<\/p>\n

Guerilla gardeners here, in England and in many other countries, have turned neglected \u00a0urban tree pits into miniature flowery enclosures and created informal community gardens on swathes of dirt between apartment buildings and the streets.\u00a0 The immediate goal is to replace neglect and hopelessness with something that is beautiful, creative and environmentally friendly.\u00a0 The long term goal is to beautify neighborhoods, empower residents and demonstrate that plants plus people equals better quality of life, even in the most benighted settings.<\/p>\n

Of course, the guerilla gardens are controversial because they act in violation of the rights of property owners–even those whose neglect borders on the criminal.\u00a0 But still, it seems to me a very gentle kind of lawlessness, as it does not appear to harm anyone.\u00a0 In fact, it may help the covert gardeners find inspiration in otherwise unpromising lives, not to mention brightening the days of people who get enjoyment out of seeing the unlikely plantings.\u00a0 You can read all about it in the 2008 book, On Guerilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening Without Boundaries<\/em>.\u00a0 The author, Richard Reynolds, is one of the pioneers of the movement, who plants by night and blogs by day.\u00a0 His book combines a bit of guerilla gardening history with inspiring tales of groundbreaking–literally and figuratively–plant lovers who have made it their mission to spread the plant wealth to unlikely places.<\/p>\n

Like the World War I soldier\/gardeners, guerilla gardeners often must leave their work to the mercy of a sometimes uncaring world.\u00a0 But as with any horticultural endeavor, a big part of the pleasure is in the process.\u00a0 And that process is valuable to society, especially in perilous times.\u00a0 When we tend to living things, we tend to our own humanity.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Some things are universal\u2014or nearly so–and show up in every culture.\u00a0 Chicken soup is one of them, even if the \u201cchicken\u201d in the soup is some other variety of fowl.\u00a0 Gardens are another.\u00a0 The urge to garden has remained strong through civilization\u2019s\u00a0 many travails, including wars, natural disasters, dislocation and urbanization.\u00a0 The deliberate cultivation … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3,1,5],"tags":[1467,507,888,1468,1466,1465,1464],"class_list":["post-1934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","category-uncategorized","category-winter","tag-anne-powell","tag-gardening-books","tag-guerilla-gardening","tag-richard-reynolds","tag-uncommon-gardens","tag-unusual-gardens","tag-world-war-i"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1934"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1936,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934\/revisions\/1936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}