Surprise surprise

“Surprise evening”, so was written in the timetable and up until yesterday I wondered and I - not too subtly – enquired. The mystery was suddenly revealed to me when, during the hectic preparation, Milosz started to rave about gardening tools, plants and so on… “is it guerrilla gardening tonight?”

After reaching a no man’s suburban place in Rome we started planning and planting a flower-bed.

There were about forty of us. The heap of tools disappeared in no time and feet were in stepping on the ground. There was a strange bee-hive energy among all of us because motivation was up and kicking. The idea behind guerrilla gardening is to act against neglect of public spaces and reclaim it to public use.

In Rome, as in many other cities I guess, there are plenty of unused or abandoned areas that could easily be transformed by our own small actions. Planting a seed could be a way to change our surroundings and give a clear message that we do value green areas in our grey cities. It is even a way to stretch the idea that the city is ours and we want to take a good care of it, care that often is lacking in municipality policies.

Just arrived we set up for our dinner, a kind of strange picnic in between two roads and a roundabout. An then: we “digged”, we giggled, we sowed, we “singed”, we racked, we “runned”, we planted and, in the end, we just did it!

Neighbourhood was curious and people started coming down to see what was going on. They were pretty happy to see us around and started asking questions. One even brought us a plant! Cars were slowing down to have a peek and they showed their support in a variety of ways. In the end, we spent a good time in an unusual way (it really was a surprise), we joined local people improving their city and, as usual, “deeds no words”!

Some links go dig deeper:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_gardening

and

http://www.guerrillagardening.org/