Fun Holidays - International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day

For many years, Russia has had a law on dacha amnesty According to it, gardeners and vegetable gardeners register ownership of plots and buildings on them, erected without obtaining permits, according to a simplified scheme The practice of illegally using allotments and planting plants on abandoned or no-man's land is common throughout the world Thanks to caring people, flower beds appear near public buildings, green areas near high-rise buildings and real oases in industrial areas Guerrilla gardening as a way to combat dense buildings and imperfect urban landscapes appeared in the 1970s in the United States Since that time, participants in the movement in 30 countries around the world have been engaged in landscaping abandoned spaces, vacant lots and roadside embankments, holding campaigns to reduce the frequency of lawn mowing and other activities In 2007, an initiative group of gardeners from Brussels established an unusual holiday International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day is celebrated annually on May 1st The movement owes its origin to the term “guerrilla gardening” by Liz Christie and her Green Rebel Group, who in 1973 turned an unkempt plot of land in a New York City neighborhood into a garden Decades later, Liz Christy Garden, which fell under the supervision of the city parks department, is still cared for by volunteers The partisans plant not only flowers and trees on abandoned lands In Honduras, bananas grow on abandoned plantations and in public places, in Poland - pumpkins, in Belgium - sunflowers, in Finland - meadow plants, in New Zealand - cabbage Guerrilla movement as a form of protest gets its name from the methods participants choose to transform the urban landscape Thus, seed bombing is used to plant grass and bushes in hard-to-reach places The partisans drop “seed bombs” consisting of humus, clay and plant seeds onto the plots Landscapers install benches in parks and plant seedlings at night Thanks to the coordinated work of 1,000 like-minded people, a public garden emerged on a vacant lot in the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen during the nightly event “Garden in a Day” These and other initiatives are an act of demonstrating the right of people to change the face of the city in order to improve its ecology and infrastructure International Guerrilla Gardening Day calls for a review of land ownership that is located within or in close proximity to a city According to volunteers, vacant lots and areas that are in a neglected state should be handed over to people who are ready to improve them by planting plants And then the prediction of Vladimir Mayakovsky, with whose work foreign “green rebels” are most likely not familiar, will come true: “In four years there will be a garden city here!”