As all good guerrillas know, May 1st is International Guerrilla Sunflower Day. You can read about other people's activities on this
Guerrilla Gardening forum thread. We couldn't join the rest of the troop in Edinburgh so carried out a series of missions in our home town of Prestonpans.
This morning, I took my two youngest children to a
tiny patch of land off Wilson Avenue to plant sunflower seeds. It is my favourite type of guerrilla gardening site - lots of pedestrian traffic, largely unnoticed... and with the potential to be
stunning. Ironically, it backs on to the formal and very well maintained Tower Gardens, notable for its beautiful laburnham archway.
We removed some weeds and broken glass then planted gladioli and the front and sunflower seeds all along the back wall. For a bit of instant colour we transplanted some grape hyacinth taken from our back garden.
After a good water (we took a milk bottle and take an extra, punctured lid to act as sprinkler) we paid a visit to our second site in the Conservation Village - the
'Caged Sunflowers' on Preston Road, (they were planted in a tree cage). We removed some of the choking weeds and were pleased to see the seedlings are coming on fine. A police patrol car gave no more than a passing glance at our 'Little Princess' and 'Barbie' gardening trugs.
Back home we grabbed the seedbombs we had made a couple of days ago (wildflower seeds, sunflower seeds, compost and fuller's earth) and flung them over the parking lot in
Preston Court.
You can see all the
Prestonpans sunflower sites plotted on this map (switch to 'Bird's Eye View' for a glimpse of the beautiful gardens).
