Guerrilla gardening

For those of you who don't know, guerrilla gardening is a bit of a rogue sport. You plant seeds, plants, and can even landscape areas that are neglected, abandoned, or just an eyesore. I think it's considered a form of passive protest, but I really see it more as a way to beautify our environment.

Here in suburbia, I find it immaculate, boring landscaping to be standard. If you don't have a 2', weeping evergreen surrounded by dyed red mulch, tightly, poorly pruned Ilex, and leggy nandina, you're not conforming and people stop to watch you work. What seems to also be standard are naked sides, rubbish strewn sides to office buildings and corner lots that are empty and weedy, waiting for future development.

My gardens happen to be exactly that. I don't have a 'yard', unlike a majority of my neighbors, and I can sometimes barely resist running across the street in the middle of the night to plant something interesting. So far, I've been able to resist, but there are a few places that I walk by that aren't so resistable.

Here's a rose I planted on the trashy, blank side of a doctor's office about a year ago. I went to take pictures yesterday for an article, and found that the rose is getting ready to bloom! It's in a place the landscapers probably don't even notice, but I always get an easy glimpse of it from the sidewalk.