Guerilla Gardening........

Principles of "Engaged Ecology"

1) We have the right to fresh air, clean water and healthy soil.

2. A government that cannot provide them loses legitimacy.

3) The earth is in crisis.

4) Cities are not the problem, the're the solution.

5) Cities are alive and should be treated that way.

6) Biodiversity is the best measure of a healthy place.

7) Humans have evolved to live in harmony with nature.

8) The public creates the best public spaces.

9) People will care for a place they plant themselves.

10) Engaged ecology creates a community.


To survive in prison, one must develop ways to take satisfaction in one's daily life. . . I saw the garden as a metaphor for a certain aspects of my life. A leader must also tend his garden: he, too, plants seeds and then watches, cultivates, and harvests the results. -Nelson Mandela


The experience of being in a place where the forces are resolved together at once is completely restufl and whole. It is like sitting under an oak tree: things in nature reolve all the forces acting on them together; they are, in that sense, whole and balanced.
-Christopher Alexander



From Guerilla Gardening, A Manualfesto, by David Tracey.