this weekend and more!

hey gardeners

if you haven't committed to any plans this weekend, this is your reminder to check out the Food & Farm Expo. It's thursday - saturday.. tons of great speakers, chefs, farmers, gardeners and foodies are gathering for a conference geared towards sustainable agriculture and urban lifestyles.

ALSO: there's a Localicious party on Friday featuring delicious foods from some of chicago's top restaurants that all support local and organic food. tickets are 75 dollars, but for the calibur of food it is way worth it! yum!

also keep in mind: the growing season is starting soon so I will be planning the year's first guerrilla gardening dig soon. I'm always open for suggestions as to a good location. Here are some of my criteria:
1. medium-high traffic, so people can see the difference
2. near a place that offers a good service (think schools, libraries, community centers, etc)
3. some place dig-able. While I might be building some planter boxes this year to add some life to places in desperate need of green.. it always makes it easier if there is soil already in the ground.

midwest food and farm expo

Hey everyone

Next month marks the fifth annual food and farm expo at UIC. It's a weekend workshop filled with great food, guest speakers, farmers, foodies and more. I'll be part of a panel on urban farming and gardening. Come check out the event!

quick update

hey everyone.

so i didn't officially let you know, but gardening has stopped for the season.

there are two reasons for this:

1) winter is approaching so planting flowers typically does not happen

2) my semester at school has kicked into high gear and i've been needing more time to focus on that

however, i have still been getting a lot of interest in GGing.

my plan is to hopefully get some local florists involved next summer to donate flowers so that we can make a bigger impact. I figure now that there is photographic evidence and stories written about this in the paper it adds to the legitimacy of it. Hopefully flower shop owners will agree!

did you know that Home Depot destroys all of their plants every month that don't sell? and they won't give them to me! and they won't tell me when/where they exactly shred them so that they can 'conveniently get coffee' while i clandestinely run in and save the plants before they go into the chopper. outrageous! if you know anyone that works at a home depot who is willing to bend the rules for the GG cause, please contact me!

I will keep you all posted as to any media hits there are and when the summer gets closer expect the blog to pick back up.

until then, have a warm winter and maybe start some seedlings in your apartment for the first outing next year :)

Bucktown Library

the month of august has been crazy. I've been interning, taking classes and completing a yoga teacher training. The weather has been beautiful and I've been riding around everywhere, scouting out the next spot to beautify-- when i had some time! There are so many places, but I really like the idea of planting flowers around places that serve the public in some way. So this month it was the wickerpark/bucktown library. They have some bushes, but it needed a little love. My friend Dustin and I went to home depot on our bicycles to pick up some flowers and realized there was no way we were carrying the cargo without some help. So I called my friend Josh and he came to the rescue because he has a car. We were able to successfully get the flowers from point A to point B. ALSO! Stanley came out this week for the first time and he actually brought more flowers to plant! that was awesome.
This is Josh and Dustin getting to work on one of the sides.
Here's one side.
Here's the other side.

All in all it was a really fun night. It took about 40 minutes and we had some digging issues because one of the sides of the entrance had a few obstacles underground that took awhile to dig up. Other than that it was great and now the library and all its customers have something special to look at as they go to check some books out.

thanks to candice, josh, dustin and stanley for helping!

chicago tribune article

I would have updated this sooner, but really I didn't think this story existed on the internet! This is Bill Hagerman's article from last month's guerrilla gardening trip. It came out really great. I couldn't find it online, so I called him early monday morning and asked him to send me some hard copies-- chicago tribunes run 2 dollars each! so he sent me a dozen hard copies! what a good guy.

anyway, thank you ashley for finding this link online so I can share it with people.

http://www.thestate.com/129/story/907609.html

smith park GG

last night was fun.
i was exhausted and it was rainy all day, but the invites were already set out, so i was committed.

at 10pm my two lovely roommates (jenny and amanda) along with my friend chris (happy belated, bro!) went down to grand and rockwell right at smith park. the Chicago Tribune asked in advance to follow me on this dig to write a story-- so keep an eye out for the sunday special feature article in early august!

i had 35 flowers, two trowels, a small rake, a screwdriver and a pair of gardening gloves. ms. moriah showed up and it's a good thing she did because she is the fastest digger i've ever encountered. i think it's because she grew up on a farm.

anyway, the job was quick. we beautified the entrance to the park next to what looked like the restrooms, but apparently they are not restrooms. an old building of some sort. they had bushes, but no flowers and there is a park right by and a picnic table, so hopefully people will notice the difference.

a special thanks and shout out to my fabulous sister nicole who generously donated 20 dollars for the dig! she's in san francisco, so she can't help out in the sense of digging, but she wanted to help so she mailed me some funds. greatly appreciated

here are some pictures, though the after picture doesn't really do it justice:

viva chicago

well, it's been a little bit since the last dig.
here's the update:

I am over-ambitious and so when i originally said this would be a weekly effort, I got in over my head.
To remedy this, I knocked it down to a monthly event. much more affordable and attainable.

THAT said, I went on the June dig last night!
Josh, his totally awesome friend Keri and myself met up at the viva chicago mural (on Hubbard st at Carpenter) to plant some things. It was really hot out all day, but by 10 it had cooled off and was a beautiful night. With a generous donation of 10 dollars from my supervisor at Access Living I was able to buy some garden tools for this time around. It's a good thing, because this soil needed some tilling! it was hard and dry and lots of weeds.

We were also joined by a freelance journalist who is trying to publish a story on guerrilla gardening in the Chicago Reader. He was there asking questions the whole time, which made for interesting conversation (or really monologues..) but it was a good reminder to me of why i love this concept.

yes, it's fun. yes, flowers are pretty. but really guerrilla gardening to me is about a public service. i could garden all i want in my backyard (or tiny patio) but this is about spreading the love, getting together with a group of people and making a difference. it builds community with those I am gardening with and makes a statement to those that notice "hey, where did these flowers come from?" it raises community morale and it's so simple. every bit of land can be loved, even the forgotten plots, even the small plots. it all makes a difference!

anyway, below are the before and after pictures! check them out