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Showing posts with label pothole gardening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pothole gardening. Show all posts
The Pothole Gardener is a success story: they are calling him the "Banksy of Guerrilla Gardening". He started out doing tiny-and ephemeral-installations in potholes on his street because he didn't have his own garden. Creating a miniature scene, photographing it and seeing what happened.
His renown grew: word of his creations was picked up by the press, his blog had 25,000 hits a month.
It's a sweet book that documents his works to date: a journey through London's streets and neighbourhoods via the pothole creations. And TreeHugger has a sneak preview.
The book is a series of delightful and cleverly staged pictures on different themes: golf, bicycles, snow, fashion, knitting; you name it, he has thought of a way to portray it.
The reasons for his success are obvious. The little gardens make people smile. They are witty, whimsical and a gift to harried passers-by. As explained in the foreword to the book:
He’s giving us something innocent and unsullied. And it’s because he wants nothing back from us in return. His simple creations are a reminder of the good in people and they make us present and appreciative of our world. And there in lies his genius.
As he explains: "I just want to create little moments of happiness and remind people to stop and smell the roses."
When TreeHugger profiled Pete Dungey, an artist making miniature gardens in the cracks in Oxford's roads, they wrote that he "works alone, but hopes that others will follow his lead." Turns out a fellow Brit has been treading the same ground all along, adding an extra dose of whimsy to the already adorable little patches of green.
Dungey's counterpart, Londoner Steve Wheen, "fills potholes in roads and sidewalks with soil and living plants, decorating the spaces with miniature props to create tiny worlds," according to the European design site designboom.
Like many other guerrilla gardeners who have come before him, this pothole gardener says he was inspired by the lack of green space in his neighborhood and a frustrated desire to garden.
With their teeny-tiny chairs, tennis courts, laundry lines, and picnic blankets, these are "green spaces" only a small doll could actually utilize, but Wheen, an avid cyclist, hopes they will put a smile on the faces of passers-by and "highlight how crap our roads and footpaths are."
Wheen cheerfully documents his guerrilla gardening exploits on his blog, where he also gives shouts-out to like-minded urban interventionists. Commenting on his work, a pedestrian advocacy group writes: "To us, the pothole gardener represents the kind of thing Living Streets wants to see more of -- small and beautiful things that make people take a moment out of their busy day to smile and appreciate their community."
As I have repeatedly stated, I just adore creativity; and, Pete Dungey has proved himself to be a man of vision. His solution for bringing attention to the potholes in his home town of Oxford, England is nothing short of attention-grabbing while being totally non-aggressive. Everyone should protest in such a manner.
Pete Dungey has been patiently planting flowers in potholes to highlight "the problem of surface imperfections on Britain's roads." He says "If we planted one of those in every hole, it would be like a forest in the road". What a wonderfully environmentally-friendly to draw attention to a problem.
He relies heavily on common, every-day garden variety primulas. Despite the cold weather in Britain, primulas are out now. So far, Dungey is the only known pothole gardener; but, he hopes to have fellow gardeners join him in his protest.
With any luck, pothole gardening; and, the concept of creative, non-aggressive, environmentally-friendly protest will spread around the world.
I'm fortunate to have several passions in my life. I am absolutely an eco-nut. I am always trying to find new ways to reduce, reuse, recycle. We, as a species, have done more harm to this planet in the short time we have been here, than any other catastrophe or happening ever has. It's up to us to fix it.
I care about the environment whether it is as small as a single cell or as large as the universe.
I adore creativity and think we can all do more with much less. This earth has enough resources for us all to live comfortably if we all learn to share. Wasn't that a lesson we were supposed to learn in kindergarten?
I also love the bizarre, unusual, the weird and the strange. Be prepared for the odd "different" blog.
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