Guerilla Gardenning

There's a particularly bare flower bed outside my appartment, it is seriously depressing, it's about 15 metres long and 40cm wide and is mostly covered in woodchip. After 2 months I found it so depressing that I had to do something about it, so I began planting seeds in paper pots in an attemot to populate the area. 2 French beans and 2 pumpkin plants were the first to be ready (very quick growers) so I snuck out about 10 'o clock and furtively spread my poor little offering over the long and barren trench.

I was worried about the plants hardiness (as they had lived indoors up until this point), the state of the soil (as it was shockingly baron), the criminal intent of the passing chavs (on there way to drink white lighting on Hartham common) and the possibility that the management company would turn up within a day to uproot the plants.

My planting efforts went almost unoticed by the occassional passing resident and the smokers loitering around the communal entrances, until one lady wandered up and commented "That looks nice... what have you got?"- I was unsure if she was being sincere as in my opinion it looked like a pathetic offering, but I decided to pretend that I thought she was and replied "Just some beans and a couple of pumpkins- I just couldn't stand to see it so bare any more." And with that I disappeared back into the building before the police arrived and locked me up for crimes against dullness.

The first thing that became apparent was that I had nowhere near enough seedlings and would need to plant up about 4 times the amount of paper pots that I already had. My 4 plants looked completly lost in the large desolate expanse.

It took me a couple of days to make the pots and fill them but I managed to get them planted with a combination of beans, sage, sunflowers, cornflower, sweatpea, and morning glory, and then I had to ship them off to a friends as my windowsills just weren't big enough (Thanks Katy!).

The next biggest challenge seems to be the wind. The poor whimpy beens are suffering from a bit of windburn, but the new seedlings are going to be propogated outside so they should be a little hardier. Then the next problem is an unexpected one of careless dog owners. I came out the other monrning to find a big poo between one of the beens and one of the pumpkins... as was... the canine in question had trampled all over said pumpkin! Not happy!

So the only remaining challenge was the management company but I saw them yesterday morning with a hoe and a leaf blower and the plants (with the exception of the trampled pumkin) are all in tact. More here soon!