Guerilla Gardening

On 20 May, the morning I left Oxford for my jaunt, a hugely controversial Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) was installed in the area where I live. Lots of residential streets have been blocked with bollards and soil-filled planters, and double yellow lines prevent food deliverers from parking near the restaurants where they collect the food. Shops on the main road complain that customers will stop coming if they cannot park in the side roads, and shops in the side roads say they will lose passing custom. Lots of people say that the extra traffic on the main roads will make it slower to get to work and to drive their children to school.

If I were in charge of the purse strings, I would put in lots of low-cost (or free, ideally) buses so that there'd be no reason for most of the cars to be on the roads at all and I'd set up walking groups for children to get to school. But I'm not.

I've been watching the empty planters in all the streets near me gather rubbish since I got back home, wondering whether the council was planning to plant them. It seems not and as I didn't give away quite all my plants in my recent Freegle clear-out, I took a bucket of them to one of the planters at the end of my road this afternoon and got planting. Three people commented - all Muslim men who told me that God would bless me for what I was doing. Interesting - very many food deliverers are Muslim men and they are stereotyped as being opposed to the LTN. I replied that I didn't know how long the plants would last - I expect late-night drinkers or the council to rip them all out. One of the deliverers, Z, said he'd keep an eye on them each time he came to collect food. Three hours later I went to see how they were faring and bumped into him again. He smiled broadly and told me that many people had been stopping, smiling and taking photos.

They are nothing special - all ordinary garden flowers - and it'll be interesting to see how long they last. If they do, I'll put herbs in the twin planter across the road so that people can help themselves.


If any of you haven't yet come across the extraordinary Blip journal of young Ukrainian, Max, it is here. You will weep.