Sometimes it's easy to think, as per Bob Dylan's "Not Dark Yet," "My sense of humanity has gone down the drain."

Enough man-made negativity circles the globe at any given time to make us wonder if our species is doomed to self-destruct and leave it all to the cockroaches, horseshoe crabs and the kudzu. From Robert Mugabe thwarting the democratic process in Zimbabwe and the Burmese military junta doing the same in Myanmar to the Chinese forcing their presence on the Tibetans, and beef industry and agribusiness leaders clear-cutting rain forests in South America for arable land, you don't have to look far for signs of inevitable collapse.

But then you see something, below the radar, that some anonymous soul has done—creating an oasis of green in an abandoned city lot, posting an "impeach" or "bring the troops home" sign along an interstate overpass—and you realize many more people are on your side than on the other, darker side.

What made me think of this was the arrival of an extraordinary book-length meditation and guide by Richard Reynolds called On Guerilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening Without Boundaries (Bloomsbury). This book is not unlike one of the above welcome sightings. Guerilla gardening, Reynolds says, "is the illicit cultivation of someone else's land." He heads an international organization called Guerilla Gardening based in London but with chapters in countries all over the world. He and his anonymous cronies (e.g., Helen 1106, Christopher 1594, Purple 321, etc.) are burying us in flowers, vegetables and greenery instead of asphalt, concrete, drought and war.

Explaining their actions, he says "Some people have a different definition of gardening. I am one of them. I do not just tend neglected gardens but create them from neglected space."

Guerilla gardeners are modern-day Johnny Appleseeds. Reynolds' book, in fact, traces the origin of this movement back to John Chapman (aka "Appleseed"), a Massachusetts native who created impromptu orchards in advance of the westward migration of settlers, and the Diggers in 17th century England, who wanted to "make the Earth a Common Treasury for All, both Rich and Poor ..."

The weapons of the guerilla gardeners are packets of seeds, trowels and the requisite chutzpah needed to step into "private" areas that are dead-in-spirit and transform them into something life-enhancing. Who could possibly object? (That's a rhetorical question, folks.) It's always struck me as bizarre that we would turn our back on the wind, sun and waves and, instead, wait for giant tankers to arrive from thousands of miles away filled with black goo extracted from under the sands of desert wastelands. Likewise, we turn our backs on spaces that don't "belong" to us, even when they are ugly as sin and dead as doornails.

Whatever guerilla gardeners bring to life will be eaten and shared by someone or some animal. And that will further light the green fuse, as will getting a copy of this book. Better yet, read it and become one of the growing guerilla army.

There's a related movement—though not in any secretive, or guerilla way—to create "community gardens." The American Community Gardening Association has put down, ahem, roots in communities all over New England, including Hartford, Enfield, Westport, Wallingford and New Haven; and Worcester and Northampton.

The organizers of these collaborative efforts say that "growing community" is as important as growing vegetables. Indeed the motto of the ACGA is, "In community gardening, 'community' comes first." For more information, check communitygarden.org. ¦

Send your comments to

editor@hartfordadvocate.com