The term “guerrilla” may bring to mind a small band of armed soldiers, moving in the dead of night on a stealth mission. In the case of guerrilla gardening, the soldiers are planters, the weapons are shovels, and the mission is to transform an abandoned lot into a thing of beauty. Once an environmentalist’s nonviolent direct action for inner-city renewal, this movement is spreading to all types of people in cities around the world. These modern-day Johnny Appleseeds perform random acts of gardening, often without permission. Typical targets are vacant lots, railway land, underused public squares, and back alleys. The concept is simple, whimsical, and has the cheeky appeal of being a not-quite-legal call to action. Dig in some soil, plant a few seeds, or mend a sagging fence—one good deed inspiring another, with win-win benefits all around. Guerrilla Gardening outlines the power-to-the-people campaign for greening our cities. Tips for effective involvement include: • Finding plants and seeds cheap (or free) • Handling city officials • Getting the dirt on soil • Planting to bring back the birds • Knowing when to ask first Social activists, city dwellers, and longtime gardeners will delight in this fast-paced and funny call to arms. David Tracey is a journalist and environmental designer who operates EcoUrbanist in Vancouver. He is executive director of Tree City Canada, a nonprofit ecological engagement group.

On Guerrilla Gardening is an activist's call to arms to all citizens - green-fingered, green-thinking or curious - to join the revolution of guerrilla gardening: transforming public space into oases of colour and life. The enemy: neglect, apathy and the disintegration of community spirit. The arsenal: daring, a packet of seeds and a passionate commitment to social change. When Richard Reynolds first embarked on guerrilla gardening, growing flowers by moonlight outside his tower block, he had no idea it was part of a growing global movement committed to cultivating the potential in the land regardless of all obstacles. Charting the battles fought across thirty different countries and the revolutionary history of this subculture, On Guerrilla Gardening is an inspirational take on gardening in the 21st century.

While most of the existing literature on community gardens and urban agriculture share a tendency towards either an advocacy view or a rather dismissive approach on the grounds of the co-optation of food growing, self-help and voluntarism to the neoliberal agenda, this collection investigates and reflects on the complex and sometimes contradictory nature of these initiatives. It questions to what extent they address social inequality and injustice and interrogates them as forms of political agency that contest, transform and re-signify ‘the urban’. Claims for land access, the right to food, the social benefits of city greening/community conviviality, and insurgent forms of planning, are multiplying within policy, advocacy and academic literature; and are becoming increasingly manifested through the practice of urban gardening. These claims are symptomatic of the way issues of social reproduction intersect with the environment, as well as the fact that urban planning and the production of space remains a crucial point of an ever-evolving debate on equity and justice in the city. Amid a mushrooming over positive literature, this book explores the initiatives of urban gardening critically rather than apologetically. The contributors acknowledge that these initiatives are happening within neoliberal environments, which promote –among other things - urban competition, the dismantling of the welfare state, the erasure of public space and ongoing austerity. These initiatives, thus, can either be manifestation of new forms of solidarity, political agency and citizenship or new tools for enclosure, inequality and exclusion. In designing this book, the progressive stance of these initiatives has therefore been taken as a research question, rather than as an assumption. The result is a collection of chapters that explore potentials and limitations of political gardening as a practice to envision and implement a more sustainable and just city.

Create your own enchanting witch’s garden and draw energy from the earth with this guide to cultivating your very own magical ingredients. A green witch embraces the power of nature, draws energy from the earth and the universe, and relies on stones, plants, flowers, and herbs for healing. In The Green Witch’s Garden, you will learn how to create your own magical space to enhance your witchcraft practice. With information on how to plan and design your sacred garden and tips and tricks to growing and harvesting magical ingredients, this book will allow you to take control of your practice and more deeply connect with the earth. Let experienced witch and author of The Green Witch Arin Hiscock-Murphy guide you on your path to creating your personal piece of nature.

Over the last two decades, "green criminology" has emerged as a unique area of study, bringing together criminologists and sociologists from a wide range of research backgrounds and varying theoretical orientations. It spans the micro to the macro—from individual-level environmental crimes and victimization to business/corporate violations and state transgressions. There have been few attempts, however, to explicitly or implicitly integrate cultural criminology into green criminology (or vice versa). This book moves towards articulating a green cultural criminological perspective. Brisman and South examine existing overlapping research and offer a platform to support future excursions by green criminologists into cultural criminology’s concern with media images and representations, consumerism and consumption, and resistance. At the same time, they offer an invitation to cultural criminologists to adopt a green view of the consumption landscape and the growth (and depictions) of environmental harms. Green Cultural Criminology is aimed at students, academics, criminologists, and sociologists with an interest in green criminology and cultural criminology: two of the most exciting new areas in criminology today.

Why do so many people love gardening? What does your garden say about you? What is guerrilla gardening? The Psychology of Gardening delves into the huge benefits that gardening can have on our health and emotional well-being, and how this could impact on the entire public health of a country. It also explores what our gardens can tell us about our personalities, how we can link gardening to mindfulness and restoration, and what motivates someone to become a professional gardener. With gardening being an ever popular pastime, The Psychology of Gardening provides a fascinating insight into our relationships with our gardens.

As society has become increasingly aware of environmental issues, the challenge of structuring public participation opportunities that strengthen democracy, while promoting more sustainable communities has become crucial for many natural resource agencies, industries, interest groups and publics. The processes of negotiating between the often disparate values held by these diverse groups, and formulating and implementing policies that enable people to fulfil goals associated with these values, can strengthen communities as well as tear them apart. This book provides a critical examination of the role communication plays in social transition, through both construction and destruction of community. The authors examine the processes and practices put in play when people who may or may not have previously seen themselves as interconnected, communicate with each other, often in situations where they are competing for the same resources. Drawing upon a diverse selection of case-studies on the American, Asian and European continents, the chapters chart a range of approaches to environmental communication, including symbolic construction, modes of organising and agonistic politics of communication. This volume will be of great interest to researchers, teachers, and practitioners of environmental communication, environmental conflict, community development and natural resource management.

Imagine savoring fresh-picked strawberries on a weekend morning, plucking plump figs from your mini-orchard to quarter and serve at a farm-to-table meal with friends, or harvesting and sautéing the edible stalks of garlic bulbs. If the size of your space is bringing you back to reality, here's the best part: you don't need a big backyard to grow your own food. In fact, you don't need a yard at all. Andrea Bellamy, founder of the acclaimed blog Heavy Petal, gives you the dirt on growing gorgeous organic food with very little square footage. Simple, straightforward, design and growing advice can help you transform just a snippet of space into a stylish and edible oasis. Bellamy goes beyond the surface and shows you how to create and maintain healthy soil, decide what and when to plant, sow seeds and harvest, and most importantly, enjoy the process. So go ahead, picture that tiny nook, corner, strip, porch, alley, balcony, or postage-stamp-sized yard overflowing with fingerling potatoes, fragrant herbs, sugar snap peas, French breakfast radishes, and scarlet runner beans. Armed with luscious photography, encouraging tips, and sophisticated designs, you're sure to be inspired to join the grow-your-own revolution.

In Eco-Performance, Art, and Spatial Justice in the US, Courtney B. Ryan traces how urban artists in the US from the 1970s until today contend with environmental domestication and spatial injustice through performance. In theater, art, film, and digital media, the artists featured in this book perform everyday, spatialized micro-acts to contest the mutual containment of urbanites and nonhuman nature. Whether it is plant artist Vaughn Bell going for a city stroll in her personal biosphere, photographer Naima Green photographing Black urbanites in lush New York City parks, guerrilla gardeners launching seed bombs into abandoned city lots, or a satirical tweeter parodying BP’s response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the subjects in this book challenge deeply engrained Western directives to domesticate nonhuman nature. In examining how urban eco-artists perform alternate ecologies that celebrate the interconnectedness of marginalized human, vegetal, and aquatic life, Ryan suggests that small environmental performances can expose spatial injustice and increase spatial mobility. Bringing a performance perspective to the environmental humanities, this interdisciplinary text offers readers stymied by the global climate crisis a way forward. It will appeal to a wide range of students and academics in performance, media studies, urban geography, and environmental studies.

Become a specialist in teaching for Sustainability with the Teacher’s Manual, guiding you through activities that gauge students’ progress, develop critical thinking and enhance the quality of questions asked to bring the learning to life. The Garden Project Teacher’s Manual provides teachers with extensive instructional guidance to apply inquiry-based learning starting in the early years , in addition to rediscovering the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in. This 212-page manual gives you as teachers, the complete step-by-step guide of how to implement The Garden Project in your classroom. A PBL program, The Garden Project applies a cyclical educational model within the STEAM framework, in the exploration of Nature from seed to table back to seed. Starting for children ages 3yrs+