My mother, the guerilla gardener
Tuesday 23 September 2008 - Filed under Gardens + Plants
Across the street from my mom’s house, there’s a woman slowly but surely removing her grass and replacing it with precisely placed plantings dotting the parking strip in a style that is all her own. I like the way each of the plants is treated democratically, with its own space, but I would never have the restraint to do it like that. If you can still see dirt, there’s room to squeeze more in, and I’d keep going until I just couldn’t find a spot for one more thing. It’s a good, evergreen-heavy mix with several underutilized conifers, and I like checking the gradual progress over cocktails at the kitchen table.
This weekend, I commented on a newcomer, what I presume is a pennisetum, with the compact fuzzy flower tufts, and my mom says, “Oh that? I didn’t have a place for it, so I snuck over there and put it in.”
There’s no way the resident gardener could miss it or mistake it for a planting she forgot about, but so far, it hasn’t been evicted, so it seems like its going to be allowed to stay.
2008-09-23 » megan
23 September 2008 @ 8:50 am
Cool to see what folks in other cities are doing with the parking strip area. I agree that widely spaced plantings just seem to invite filling in, but I guess some people prefer the more spare look. That’s too hilarious that your mom is “helping” with the garden.
23 September 2008 @ 8:58 am
Hahaha – that is awesome!
23 September 2008 @ 9:55 am
Nice! And if she wants to do a little guerilla dog shit scooping, guerilla rototilling, guerilla grass planting, guerilla sprinkler system installing, and guerilla deck-rebuilding, I’ll send her our address.
24 September 2008 @ 11:04 am
That little plant: that’s nothing. I’ve got several trees planted over there–two varieties, no make that three Japanese maples and also a crepe myrtle. And there was a magnolia grandiflora, but sadly, it didn’t survive a second transplant. I think there might be a few other things, too, but after you’ve put so many plants in your neighbor’s yard, it’s hard to remember.
5 October 2008 @ 9:30 am
[...] one’s going to have to go on my field trip list. And one of my fav blogs, Nest Maker, has a funny post about goings on in the parking [...]