Glasgow Guerrilla Gardening

Due to the awful weather conditions we will not be meeting on 26th December. We’re hopeful that the dig on the 30th will go ahead as planned if the weather picks up.

Once again a massive thanks to everyone who came out on Saturday, despite falling short of the number of volunteers we were hoping for we still managed to plant an amazing 600 Snakeshead Fritallaries, 200 Tulips, 30 Daffodils and 50 bluebells -just short of 900 bulbs.

That still leaves us with lots of bulbs to get in the ground before new year. I shall be doing some planting at some stage on Christmas Day, inbetween the usual family commitments. As a group we only have a further two planting sessions before the New Year. We’ll next be meeting at Townhead on 26th December at 11:30am and again on Wednesday 30th December at 12pm to get the planting finished.

In order to get things finished and move on with the site it is important that anyone who is available to help out with the planting comes along -even if it’s just for 10 minutes.

If you’ve never been to the site before it’s just over the road from the Glasgow Royal Infirmary on the lane that connects Stirling Rd and Parson St -at the side entrance to St Mungo’s primary. As we have bulbs to plant all you need to bring is a pair of gloves and a hand fork, trowel or a bulb planter.

Any help you can offer with this really would be much appreciated, if you’d like to attend please email us to let us know if we can expect you along on either day.

Tags: 2009, dates for the diary, dear green place, planting, ten thousand bulb challenge, tenthousandbulbchallenge, townhead

A massive thank-you to everyone who came along last Saturday, your help is as ever very much appreciated. However there’s still tons to do we have daffodils, tulips, fritallaries, alliums anemones, grape hyacinths and hyacinths that urgently need planted before the New Year.

As things stand I’m pondering the very real possibility of having to spend the earlier part of Christmas Day planting to get everything in the ground before the end of the month. Much as I enjoy gardening I’d rather be in a position to take Christmas Day off!

We’ll be meeting up this Saturday 19th December to plant the above bulbs at the usual meeting place on the lane that connects Stirling Rd and Parson St outside St Mungos Primary in Townhead at 11:30am.

If we can get roughly twenty folk out for an hour this Saturday it’s very likely that we’ll get the planting finished ahead of deadline and it really would be a shame to have come this far and fall at the last hurdle.
So far four people have confirmed they’ll be attending, all we need is another sixteen folk and we’ll be done in no time. Provided everyone sticks to the planting plan and pitches in to help the site should be very impressive come next spring, not to mention highly attractive to both people and wildlife alike.

As you may be aware we are an unfunded group (though we hope this will change over the coming months). That means every bulb that has been bought and planted is down to the donations and hard work of everyone who has helped out this year. Everyone who has been involved can rightly feel proud of their amazing achievement so far, we just need one final big push to finish on schedule. If you haven’t been along so far it’s not too late to be part of this remarkable piece of community action.

We have plenty bulbs for you to plant so all you need bring are a pair of gardening gloves and a trowel, small fork or a bulb planter. If you haven’t been along before, lack of experience is not a problem as I’ll be on hand to explain the very simple planting plan and give a bit of guidance if you’re unsure of anything.

If you have any questions or would like to help out please do not hesitate to get in touch via email.

Tags: 2009, bulbs, dates for the diary, dear green place, glasgow, guerrilla gardening, ten thousand bulb challenge, tenthousandbulbchallenge, townhead

Morrisons are doing some very good deals on plants just now, including two of the plants we need for Townhead. We are desperately short of Primroses and Hellebores both of which are available at Morrisons at £3.29 for six Primroses and £1.79 for a single Hellebore. Please feel free to bring these along if you fancy planting something.

Tags: attacks, guerrilla gardening, plants, townhead

Here is a short interview with Richard Reynolds on The Browser in which he discusses five books which have inspired him in his guerrilla gardening activities. It looks an interesting list and should be of interest to anyone involved in guerrilla gardening. I’ll certainly be adding a few of the titles to my never ending list of things to read.

Returning to books I have got round to reading I can highly recommend Richard Reynolds On Guerrilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening without Boundaries
and Chris Baines very readable How to Make a Wildlife Garden

Tags: books, gardening, guerrilla gardening, richard reynolds, wildlife gardening

A big thanks to all who came along last Saturday to help get the bulbs planted. We’ve only a few weeks to go before the 31st December and are aiming to have all the bulbs planted by then. To do so we really, really need your help.

We are not looking for any further donations of bulbs! Whilst we haven’t managed to get 1000 bulbs of each of the ten varieties we asked for we have received over 10,000 bulbs all in and now urgently need to get these planted.

On average one person can plant plant roughly 300 bulbs in an hour. So even giving up just half an hour to an hour of your time would be a huge help to us. All you need to bring is a trowel or a bulb planter or a fork, a pair of gardening gloves and yourself. Bulbs will be provided for you to plant so there’s no need to worry about what varieties to bring.

We’ll be meeting up at Townhead on Saturday 12th December at 11:30am, Saturday 19th December at 11:30am and Saturday 26th December at 11:30am. If you’ve never been along before we meet in the lane that joins Parson St and Stirling Rd just outside St Mungo’s Primary School. You don’t need any previous gardening experience or knowledge at all and we’d be delighted to see you, even if it’s only for 10 minutes planting.

Our aim is to have about ten volunteers turn up each Saturday between now and the New Year so feel free to bring friends, family and next door neighbours.

Bulb shoots are already popping up all over the site, we’re already on the way to spring 2010 being a blaze of colour but there is still room for improvement, so if you can spare just 10 minutes please come along and help out.

Tags: 2009, attacks, bulbs, dates for the diary, glasgow, guerrilla gardening, scotland, ten thousand bulb challenge, tenthousandbulbchallenge, townhead

Article from last Saturday’s Scotsman on our group and the 10,000 bulb challenge.

With summer slipping by rapidly- yes it really is July not a mass calender based prank- our thoughts have turned towards the coming year. So now that you’re all depressed allow us to cheer you up by introducing the Ten Thousand Bulb challenge.

Those of you who’ve visited our site at Townhead will be aware it’s a fair old size so in order to get it looking really good for next spring we need bulbs and lots of them. We are aiming to attract sufficient donations in either cash or bulbs to let us blanket our Townhead and Wilson Street sites in thousands of blooms.

Between now and December 31st 2009 we hope to obtain and plant a whopping ten thousand bulbs and will be frenziedly panhandling for the next few months.  If you’d like to help out you can either use the paypal button on this page to make a donation, bring a bag of bulbs along to a dig or contact us to arrange to send bulbs to one of the troops. A no cost donation can also be made simply by visiting our Squidoo page as we earn royalties from traffic, sign ups and purchases made from the page. If you have a blog we’d be delighted if you would spare the time to write a short post about the challenge to encourage as many folk as possible to get involved.

If you have a business or website you’d like to promote we’ll be happy to write a short post highlighting your donation and add a link to our sidebar in return. We do get the occasional bit of press interest and this site attracts a good amount of traffic so it’s an excellent way to advertise cheaply whilst helping us out. We are also quite happy for you to publicise your donation and may be open to participating in any susequent publicity as long as we’re not asked to tell fibs, dance, dress up or sing.

Our bulb wishlist is below and we’ll keep you updated over the next few months as to how we’re getting on meeting our target and of course let you see the results once the bulbs bloom next year.

1000 Mixed Daffodils

1000 Mixed Tulips

1000 Snakeshead Fritillaries

1000 Snowdrops

1000 Mixed Crocuses

1000 Bluebells (native only please)

1000 Grape Hyacinths

1000 Winter Aconites

1000 Mixed Alluims

1000 Wood Anemome

We’ve selected the above for their ability to naturalise, visual impact and beneficial affect to wildlife apart from tulips who’re there to look nice and little else.  Successfully naturalised daffodil fields have been known to last for up to fifty years which means if we meet our target our  sites  will be in bloom for years to come.

We’ll be planting our first donated bulbs up at Townhead on 29th August at 12:30pm if anyone fancies joining us with a bag of bulbs from the above list.

Tags: 2009, dates for the diary, ten thousand bulb challenge