A Deweyan Defense of Guerrilla Gardening

Starting with the interest and effort of the children, the whole community has become tremendously interested in starting gardens, using every bit of available ground. The district is a poor one and, besides transforming the yards, the gardens have been a real economic help to the people.

—John Dewey and Evelyn Dewey, Schools of Tomorrow MW 8:269¹

I do not wait for permission to become a gardener but dig wherever I see horticultural potential. I do not just tend existing gardens but create them from neglected space. I, and thousands of people like me, step out from home to garden land we do not own. We see opportunities all around us. Vacant lots flourish as urban oases, roadside verges dazzle with flowers and crops are harvested from land that we assumed to be fruitless. In all their forms these have become known as guerrilla gardeners.

—Richard Reynolds, On Guerrilla Gardening 14-16

In this article, I formulate a Deweyan argument in support of guerrilla gardening, or the political activity of reclaiming unused urban land, oftentimes illegally, for cultivation and beautification through gardening. Historically, gardening movements in the United States have been associated with relief programs during periods of economic downturn and crisis, urban blight, and gentrification, as well as nationalist, nativist, and racist sentiments. Despite these last few unfortunate associations, the American philosopher John Dewey portrayed school gardening as a gateway to more enriching adult experiences, not as a nativist technique for assimilating immigrant children to a distinctly American way of life. One of those experiences that school gardening can prepare children for is political activism, particularly involvement in gardening movements. Dewey did not mention this collateral benefit. Nevertheless, an argument can be made that garden advocacy—or, more specifically, participation in politically motivated gardening movements, such as guerrilla gardening, is an acceptable interpretation, or elaboration, of what Dewey meant by "a civic turn" to school gardening.

Philosophy, Gardens, and Garden Politics

Generally, philosophers have shown little scholarly interest in the activity of gardening.² "In neglecting the garden," David Cooper writes, "philosophy is therefore ignoring not merely a current fashion, but activities and experiences of abiding human significance" (2). Important philosophical questions abound: What is a garden? What are the motivations for gardening? Does cultivating a garden lend itself to cultivating specific virtues? Is gardening a form of art and, if so, what kind? While some philosophers have explored the significance of gardening, more philosophical energy has been devoted to the aesthetic, rather than the political, dimension of gardening.³

One philosopher who does draw the connection between politics and gardening is Isis Brook. She highlights the activity's value as "an essential component of human well-being" and as an outlet for children to renew contact with nature (Brook, "Importance of Nature" 298; Brook, "Virtues of Gardening" 15). Brook also views gardening as an opportunity for children to be liberated, if only just temporarily, from adult supervision, to allow their imagination to range broadly and to face their anxieties (Brook, "Importance of Nature" 304-05).⁴ Her account of the guerrilla gardening movement is worth quoting at length:

Politically this [movement] has its roots in the same soil as the community gardening movement which began in the 1970s. The new style acts of guerrilla gardening are usually small and take place in built up areas to try to bring something of nature into the space. This could be through planting up road verges or traffic islands. The planting is done surreptitiously and often a mini garden is established and appreciated before anyone with authority over the land notices. Even sites where there is no access have been turned into havens of wildflowers by creating seed grenades with water-filled balloons or Christmas baubles packed with seeds and fertilizer, or the more ecologically respectable seed bombs of molded compost and plant seeds.

(Brook, "Importance of Nature" 308)

The proposal that school gardening should function as a metaphorical gateway to guerrilla gardening does not appear in Brook's essay. Still, she draws the connection between those features of a child's nature experience that make adult life...