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How Guerrilla Gardening Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know?
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Speaker 1: From House Stuffworks dot Com? Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
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Speaker 1: I'm Josh. Chuck's with me. Say hi, Chuck, Hi, and
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Speaker 1: I know it titillates Chuck when I say this, So,
0:18
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff you should Know. I love it. Ye
0:22
Speaker 1: sixty episodes in and we're introducing the show as the show.
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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, well you know you got the training things.
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Speaker 1: Sometimes I like it. Yeah, pretty pretty soon I'll just
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Speaker 1: start making up new names for it. Will be like, wait,
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Speaker 1: did I down a little the right one? Yeah? Um, so,
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Speaker 1: Chuck as uh as I am usually want to do.
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Speaker 1: I have an anecdote from my past that will nicely
0:41
Speaker 1: segue into what we should tell what we should talk
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Speaker 1: about today. I like these because they always I don't
0:46
Speaker 1: know about these beforehand, I really don't, so they're always interesting.
0:49
Speaker 1: This one's not, you know, by comparison, it's not that good,
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Speaker 1: So don't get your hopes. Okay, but um, you know,
0:55
Speaker 1: when I was a slightly younger man in my early teens,
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Speaker 1: I had a friend, um named Jeremy, whose dad was
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Speaker 1: a firefighter, and here was this tough guy, but he, um,
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Speaker 1: he also was fairly cultivated, you know, cultured um and uh,
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Speaker 1: he and his friends, some of them firefighter buddies, used
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Speaker 1: to go out at night and engage in what they
1:15
Speaker 1: called clumping all right now, and I've never heard of
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Speaker 1: it before or since. I think they made it up actually, um,
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Speaker 1: but clumping involved going into somebody's yard and stealing plants
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Speaker 1: that you liked and then taking them back to your
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Speaker 1: yard and planning them there. Um a firefighter to do
1:34
Speaker 1: anything exactly. Yeah, well, you know, if he's saving lives,
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Speaker 1: I think he can kind of get something of a past.
1:40
Speaker 1: But it always struck me as a little um wrong.
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Speaker 1: Maybe it is stealing quite clearly, um. But but at
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Speaker 1: the same time, it's like it's even more than stealing,
1:51
Speaker 1: you know. It's it's not like stealing somebody's cell phone.
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Speaker 1: You don't have anything really attached that except you know,
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Speaker 1: maybe your your your phone book in it. This is,
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Speaker 1: you know, somebody is cultivating a garden. Somebody's taking the
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Speaker 1: time to to plan this and intend to it, and
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Speaker 1: now all of a sudden there's huge holes filled with
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Speaker 1: stealing their time. You're stealing their or their money that
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Speaker 1: they put into the planting. Sure now comes to the segue.
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Speaker 1: You want to know what the opposite of that is.
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Speaker 1: I have a good feeling guerrilla gardening. That's precisely right.
2:20
Speaker 1: And and chuck, Now, I know there has been um
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Speaker 1: some discrepancy in the very recent past. We're talking uh
2:27
Speaker 1: the guerrilla as in like guerrilla warfare, right right, not
2:31
Speaker 1: the apes gardening girllas. Aren't apes, are they? I can
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Speaker 1: never remember. I don't know, I know the primates. Let's
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Speaker 1: go with that, okay. Um, so yeah, we're talking guerrilla gardening.
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Speaker 1: And it is pretty much what it sounds like. It's
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Speaker 1: you know, making stealth maneuvers into uh usually untended areas
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Speaker 1: or neglected or overgrown vacant lots, that that kind of thing,
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Speaker 1: and you know, tilling the soil, weed it and planning
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Speaker 1: new stuff. Yeah. I think this is really really cool.
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Speaker 1: I do too, because it's subversive, which you know, I'm
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Speaker 1: I'm very hit to, like you know, the smart mobs thing, right. Um,
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Speaker 1: but it doesn't harm anyone, doesn't harm anyone, know, as
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Speaker 1: a matter of fact, that makes the the world or
3:18
Speaker 1: the city or wherever you live. And you're doing this
3:21
Speaker 1: a much better place, although some people still try and
3:24
Speaker 1: shut it down, which we'll get to later. Yeah, good,
3:26
Speaker 1: because I got a great line for that. Yeah. So, um,
3:30
Speaker 1: you want to give a little background, a little history
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Speaker 1: on guerilla gardening. Yeah, sure. Originally I believe it started
3:36
Speaker 1: in New York City in the early seventies, the modern
3:39
Speaker 1: the modern version did, yes, right, Do you have info
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Speaker 1: on the ancient version? Apparently it goes back to sixty
3:46
Speaker 1: nine when a guy named Gerard Winston Lee I believe
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Speaker 1: he's from Surrey, England. He started a group called the
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Speaker 1: Diggers and they were basically the first guerilla gardeners. They
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Speaker 1: just went into places that they didn't own, plots of
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Speaker 1: land they didn't known, and started planting. I wonder if
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Speaker 1: they were planting crops. Actually they were planning vegetables. Yeah. Well,
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Speaker 1: the modern version started in the early seventies in New
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Speaker 1: York and there was a resident there named Liz Christie,
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Speaker 1: and she founded the Green Guerrillas and they started hitting
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Speaker 1: up local lots and planting flowers. And the first one,
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Speaker 1: I believe was at the corner of a bower which
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Speaker 1: I know well. And did you know Bowery is actually
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Speaker 1: Dutch for farm. Really. Yeah, maybe that's why they picked it.
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Speaker 1: I found it on the the Green Gorilla's website. Cool. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: so they Christie and the Green Gorillas. Um actually kind
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Speaker 1: of had a hard fought struggle at first, that that
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Speaker 1: place at the corner of Bowery in Houston that had
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Speaker 1: little housing, sorry, that little neglected park that no one
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Speaker 1: cared about. All of a sudden, now that they're tending
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Speaker 1: to it and planning stuff. They had they had a
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Speaker 1: fight on their hands with with the city. I believe.
4:57
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that. Actually, yeah, they had. They had
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Speaker 1: some thing of a struggle, and um, finally the city,
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Speaker 1: the city gave in, saw the error of its ways
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Speaker 1: after about a year and legitimized it and it became
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Speaker 1: this community garden. Now it's a memorial park dedicated to
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Speaker 1: Liz Christie. Very cool in New York. I have to
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Speaker 1: go by. But she was the one who originated seed bombs. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: these are really cool, and originally she was she was
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Speaker 1: using um condoms filled with tomato seeds or some some
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Speaker 1: kind of seeds and like compost and then you know,
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Speaker 1: hurling them into a vacant lot or something like interesting
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Speaker 1: and the condom would disintegrate. No, no, no, so they
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Speaker 1: didn't work. I mean it worked. I think the water
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Speaker 1: would get get into it or something like that, or
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Speaker 1: maybe she slid it. But even after the stuff planted,
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Speaker 1: you still have a prophylactic um laying around, which really
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Speaker 1: bacons up a lot. You know. Have you been to
5:47
Speaker 1: New York City though I have, but not since I
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Speaker 1: was young. Yeah, the condom on the street isn't the
5:51
Speaker 1: strangest thing right now, I've seen quite a few. But
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Speaker 1: there are greener ways to do it, right, Yeah. I
5:56
Speaker 1: think nowadays the seed bomb is evolved into a clay
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Speaker 1: mixture with like some clay and compost and seed and
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Speaker 1: water and you just form into a little ball and
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Speaker 1: you can just literally you can toss these from your car.
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Speaker 1: And it has to be something obviously that can can
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Speaker 1: grow from not having to dig and plant it into
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Speaker 1: the ground. But yeah, it's a seed bomb. Pretty cool. Yeah,
6:19
Speaker 1: And apparently what like they they're dried out and then
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Speaker 1: when it rains, the thing kind of reconstitutes or dissolves,
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Speaker 1: and then the seeds are spread and there's this compost
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Speaker 1: that that feeds it. Right, Ideally, I think the seed
6:31
Speaker 1: bombs are done either in the rain or before it rains,
6:34
Speaker 1: right before it rains. That's very cool. Yeah. And and
6:37
Speaker 1: like you said, you can throw them from a moving car,
6:39
Speaker 1: you know, just kind of drive around and you're just
6:41
Speaker 1: you know, guerrilla gardening, guerrilla gardening, spreading beauty. Yeah, exactly.
6:46
Speaker 1: And I saw a cool video on the Guardians website
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Speaker 1: of a guy named Richard Reynolds. Yeah, did you see
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Speaker 1: him making seed bombs? Yeah, there's there's a great how
6:56
Speaker 1: to video if if any of you guys out there
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Speaker 1: in podcast land or interest it in making your own
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Speaker 1: seed bombs, there's a great how to step by step
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Speaker 1: video um with Richard Reynolds. And you're absolutely right, he
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Speaker 1: is a cool dude. He's a very cool dude. Um.
7:09
Speaker 1: While we're on Richard, he's he was the founder of
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Speaker 1: the London grilla guardening movement from what I understand, and
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Speaker 1: has a great website Gorilla Guardening dot org. Yeah, it's
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Speaker 1: pretty much like the definitive guerrilla gardening website. I know,
7:21
Speaker 1: in a Google search of the typing guerilla gardening, it's
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Speaker 1: definitely the first one that comes up, which is because
7:26
Speaker 1: seems the most legitimate as well. Yeah, um, he actually
7:29
Speaker 1: I read a cool thing on his website today where
7:31
Speaker 1: he um had been taken care of. It may have
7:33
Speaker 1: been his own apartment complex. It was the Horse and
7:36
Speaker 1: Elephant or the Buggy and something around right. I love
7:39
Speaker 1: the names for the pretty cool. It's very cool. So yeah,
7:43
Speaker 1: he was had been taking care of his own garden
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Speaker 1: there and eventually got um. The residents had been paying
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Speaker 1: uh money towards maintenance, lawn maintenance, and basically the residents
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Speaker 1: started to say, hey, this is kind of fraudulent. This
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Speaker 1: guy has been doing this free. We're paying money for nothing.
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Speaker 1: And he actually got refunded. Uh. The ninety residents he
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Speaker 1: had their money refunded for like a three year period
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Speaker 1: was about a hundred pounds, and every everything was going swimmingly.
8:11
Speaker 1: After that, he had um some sort of at least
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Speaker 1: verbal consensus between the paid groundkeepers, the building's owners, and
8:22
Speaker 1: himself that he would take care of this this area,
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Speaker 1: this common area. And he's doing a heck of a job.
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Speaker 1: The guy has you know, he's he's a great gardener
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Speaker 1: to begin with. UM. But as long as he gave
8:34
Speaker 1: the management a month a month's notice that he was
8:38
Speaker 1: going to stop so they could get that company back
8:41
Speaker 1: in there to do their you know, terrible job of
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Speaker 1: taking care of it. So he's got this agreement and
8:47
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden things just go sideways and
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Speaker 1: he's got problems again. And the one problem, you know,
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Speaker 1: it's it's mind boggling to me. If you have a
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Speaker 1: vacant lot, if you have a common area, if there's
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Speaker 1: a place where, um, it's just being neglected, and then
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Speaker 1: somebody very uh, very benevolently just starts taking care of it,
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Speaker 1: plant it. What's the problem. But the problem is is
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Speaker 1: there is guerrilla gardening also kind of inadvertently serves as
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Speaker 1: a slap in the face to people who are very
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Speaker 1: interested in rules and procedure and you know, like they're
9:22
Speaker 1: County Cordon code Enforcement's phone number by heart, and that's
9:26
Speaker 1: all you have to do. It's called code enforcement. And
9:28
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, this this great act is now criminal,
9:33
Speaker 1: which it wasn't the first place, but everybody kind of
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Speaker 1: looks the other way, right. Did you see the video
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Speaker 1: on his site where they got shut down? No? I
9:39
Speaker 1: didn't see them. Yeah, it's on YouTube as well, and
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Speaker 1: it's on his website. And they were actually tending to
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Speaker 1: a an area underneath a street sign I believe in
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Speaker 1: London on a corner and uh at night, usually it's
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Speaker 1: gardening at night. Uh. Thanks to r M, we can
9:55
Speaker 1: give them a little shout out and they do this
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Speaker 1: undercover the night quite often. And the cops came by
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Speaker 1: and they shut him down. It's all on tape and
10:02
Speaker 1: he gets into a little minor argument with them that
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Speaker 1: they're beautifying the area and the cops uh. And of
10:07
Speaker 1: course these are cops in London, so it's all very polite.
10:10
Speaker 1: You know. In the United States, that would go down
10:12
Speaker 1: much differently. And eventually they you know, they actually left
10:15
Speaker 1: because they threatened to arrest them and um, but they
10:18
Speaker 1: snuck back a couple of hours later and finish the
10:20
Speaker 1: job for them. Yeah. And and yes, I noticed there's
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Speaker 1: like clips and and um photo documentaries of like him
10:26
Speaker 1: all over the world doing like guerrilla gardening. Yeah, and
10:30
Speaker 1: it is all over the world. I saw that there
10:32
Speaker 1: were sites in German and Australia, and here in the
10:34
Speaker 1: United States are a lot of groups. And like you
10:37
Speaker 1: were pointing out, we don't or I pointed out, we
10:38
Speaker 1: don't have one here in Atlanta. Um. But you mentioned
10:42
Speaker 1: that you don't necessarily have to have a group, an
10:44
Speaker 1: organized group that does this in a website. You can
10:46
Speaker 1: you can do it on your own. Yeah, I mean,
10:48
Speaker 1: it doesn't get much more low tech than than seed bombs,
10:51
Speaker 1: you know. And you could, like you said, just drive around,
10:53
Speaker 1: throw them out the window, see what happens. But yeah,
10:56
Speaker 1: you could go so far as to organize a group
10:58
Speaker 1: right well, which is kind of the cool thing I think. Um,
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Speaker 1: it goes a little bit beyond just the gardening and beautification.
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Speaker 1: A lot of times, it's bringing the community together in
11:07
Speaker 1: a cool way, just like when you there's groups that
11:09
Speaker 1: go around and pick up trash that kind of thing. Yeah. Now, um,
11:12
Speaker 1: I know on reynolds site there's something called troop digs.
11:16
Speaker 1: I think it's like the forum you can go and
11:19
Speaker 1: find out who's digging in your area right where they're
11:21
Speaker 1: going to be that kind of thing, or who you
11:23
Speaker 1: need to contact. Um and and some people from what
11:27
Speaker 1: I've read about reynalds, he uh is completely into beautification.
11:31
Speaker 1: That his only motive. But there's there's also a very
11:34
Speaker 1: political aspect to it. To grilla gardening. Um, it's all
11:39
Speaker 1: it can be a form of protest of you know, capitalism,
11:42
Speaker 1: of of urban blight. That that kind of thing, the
11:45
Speaker 1: city won't take care of itself, so we will, right exactly. Um.
11:49
Speaker 1: And also of like food costs, that can be a
11:52
Speaker 1: protest of that, right. Um. And actually there's this guy
11:55
Speaker 1: in I believe Boulder, Colorado this past summer's name was
12:01
Speaker 1: Scott Hoffenburg, and he got slept with the two thousand
12:04
Speaker 1: dollar a day fine for guerrilla gardening. Really, and the
12:07
Speaker 1: reason he was doing it, he said, was because food
12:10
Speaker 1: prices had gotten out of hand. So he in a
12:12
Speaker 1: neighbor took up this little right away, you know, the
12:14
Speaker 1: little strips in between the sidewalk in the street. They
12:17
Speaker 1: just planted a bunch of cucumbers and tomatoes and squash
12:21
Speaker 1: and all this kind of thing. And um that some
12:25
Speaker 1: some one of those people with rules and procedures, you know,
12:29
Speaker 1: called the co enforcement. So luckily the county said they're
12:32
Speaker 1: going to try to work with the guy. And I
12:34
Speaker 1: never I didn't hear what happened, but I have a
12:36
Speaker 1: feeling that if you're a guerrilla gardener and you're gardening
12:41
Speaker 1: actually right out front of your house and they're threatening
12:44
Speaker 1: a two thousand dollar fine, that would probably go a
12:45
Speaker 1: long way to get you to comply. With those rules
12:48
Speaker 1: and procedures. Yeah, you know, I'd like to pick someone's brain.
12:51
Speaker 1: He was really against us. Yeah, I want to meet
12:53
Speaker 1: the person who sees what's going on and goes home
12:56
Speaker 1: and it's just, yeah, dare they plant those flowers right there? Yeah?
13:00
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm curious, what's what's happening there? Yeah, And
13:03
Speaker 1: I don't think I could explain it. But I know
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Speaker 1: for a fact that I've met people like that before.
13:06
Speaker 1: It's always a little unsettling. These are probably the same
13:09
Speaker 1: people that are the neighborhood associations that just flip out
13:13
Speaker 1: when someone's mailbox looks different than the rest. And yeah,
13:15
Speaker 1: those those people are a lot of fun. I used
13:17
Speaker 1: to have a friend who lived in my subdivision. His
13:19
Speaker 1: family routinely got um letters from the neighborhood association to
13:23
Speaker 1: you know, move the water skis out from in front
13:25
Speaker 1: of the garage and that kind of thing. It's crazy.
13:27
Speaker 1: It was weird. Um so but okay, so Chuck. Both
13:31
Speaker 1: of us have expressed an interest in guerilla gardening. Let's
13:34
Speaker 1: say somebody who's listening to us, you know, wants to
13:36
Speaker 1: get started. Not everybody's against this. And actually, from what
13:40
Speaker 1: I understand. Um, local nurseries have a tendency to really
13:44
Speaker 1: kind of support this kind of thing. Yeah, they have
13:48
Speaker 1: dead plants nobody's gonna buy anyway that may or may
13:51
Speaker 1: not come back to life. Why not? So what what
13:53
Speaker 1: should what should people look for when they're doing this?
13:55
Speaker 1: But I just want to point out this very nice
13:57
Speaker 1: imperson impersonation but have tol you just like to help me? Yeah,
14:00
Speaker 1: I wish people could have seen that. Um. Well, first
14:03
Speaker 1: thing you want to do is find out, you know,
14:05
Speaker 1: identify your location of where you want to do this.
14:08
Speaker 1: So look for, like you said, sometimes the little strips
14:11
Speaker 1: of land between the street and the sidewalk that are
14:13
Speaker 1: full of trash or grown over with weeds. Those are
14:15
Speaker 1: good spots corners that have those. And then you want to,
14:19
Speaker 1: uh find out what kind of plants you want. Uh,
14:22
Speaker 1: indigenous species are good, non invasive, non invasive. You don't
14:26
Speaker 1: want to like plant the new cud zoo or anything. Right,
14:28
Speaker 1: which for you non Southerners is a very fast growing
14:32
Speaker 1: week just that just takes over absolutely everything. Right, It
14:36
Speaker 1: can kill an eight foot oak tree in a year
14:38
Speaker 1: or two, right, Thank you Japan for that exactly. Uh. So, yeah,
14:42
Speaker 1: you want to pick out the right plants, and you also,
14:43
Speaker 1: I mean you're you're gonna be It's not like you
14:45
Speaker 1: just plant this and then you just leave forever. I mean,
14:48
Speaker 1: if you really want to do it right, you want
14:50
Speaker 1: to upkeep it. So if you don't have a ton
14:52
Speaker 1: of time, you want to pick some plants that require
14:54
Speaker 1: as little upkeep as possible. Yeah, like drought resistant plants,
14:58
Speaker 1: because the law of comments everybody he wants to take
15:01
Speaker 1: as much out of this common pool and put as
15:03
Speaker 1: little back as possible, well as far as economists would say.
15:07
Speaker 1: Um so yeah, so if you have drought resistant plants,
15:09
Speaker 1: you can, you know, leave it up to the universe
15:12
Speaker 1: to take care of it. I hate that ad I know.
15:15
Speaker 1: Uh so, uh yeah, you've got your plants, you've eat.
15:18
Speaker 1: When you need to get your plants, you can ask
15:20
Speaker 1: for donations, or you can buy him yourself if you've
15:22
Speaker 1: got a extra cash, gather up a little team, or
15:25
Speaker 1: if you just want to do it yourself, if it's
15:26
Speaker 1: doable by yourself, and then you know, you go out.
15:29
Speaker 1: A lot of people do it at night. Um here
15:31
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, I think in my neighborhood, I could go
15:33
Speaker 1: out in the middle of the day and no one
15:34
Speaker 1: would do totally no same here, I think as well,
15:37
Speaker 1: and there's plenty of lots around my house that I
15:40
Speaker 1: could get to experise it. Let's do that. Well, maybe
15:43
Speaker 1: we should, all right, and if any of you out
15:45
Speaker 1: there interested in getting into guerrilla gardening, uh, we would
15:48
Speaker 1: suggest checking out guerrilla Gardening dot org Richard Renald site.
15:52
Speaker 1: He also has a book um based on the advice
15:55
Speaker 1: of Chairman Mao and Shay Gavara, but about guerrilla gardening
15:59
Speaker 1: in a of course, you would also be interested in
16:02
Speaker 1: visiting our humble website. You can type in guerrilla gardening
16:06
Speaker 1: in the search bar and how Stuff Works dot com
16:08
Speaker 1: and Chuck, what do you have for us? Do we
16:09
Speaker 1: have any listener mail? Yep, we have some listener mail.
16:12
Speaker 1: Listener mail time. So this letter, Josh comes to us
16:17
Speaker 1: from a lady named Leah Johnson, and uh, Leah says,
16:22
Speaker 1: I liked your how Echo Anxiety Works article, and I
16:25
Speaker 1: also liked how you mentioned the vulture vomit at the end. Oh, yes,
16:28
Speaker 1: this is a good letter. I have, in fact been
16:31
Speaker 1: puked on by a Turkey vulture and it was disgusting.
16:34
Speaker 1: I was part of a raptor rehabilitation program, and we
16:36
Speaker 1: had outdoor housing for them, which we cleaned out once
16:39
Speaker 1: a week. Every time I went to get the turkey
16:41
Speaker 1: vulture out so we could clean it out, or just
16:43
Speaker 1: to give him some time outside, he'd panic and puke
16:46
Speaker 1: all over the over the place, including on me. Unfortunately,
16:49
Speaker 1: I always had on gloves when handling the bird, so
16:52
Speaker 1: the acidity wasn't so much a problem as a terrible
16:54
Speaker 1: smell from the bird of prey diet we were feeding him. Anyway.
16:58
Speaker 1: Thanks for making my days better if I give me
16:59
Speaker 1: something interesting to listen to, and YadA, YadA, YadA, we
17:03
Speaker 1: love you. That's great. Well, Leah, because you send in
17:07
Speaker 1: your listener email and uh, because of your selfless care
17:11
Speaker 1: of birds of prey, we're gonna send you our set
17:14
Speaker 1: of how stuff Work steak knives are you and yours?
17:17
Speaker 1: We hope you enjoy them. And if anything else anyone
17:20
Speaker 1: else out there wants to send us an email, you
17:22
Speaker 1: can send it to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works
17:27
Speaker 1: dot com. Send it for more on this and thousands
17:34
Speaker 1: of other topics. Because at how stuff works dot com.
17:37
Speaker 1: H brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
17:42
Speaker 1: It's ready, Are you