words by Carol King
Tulips will soon be blooming in the derelict urban spaces of Bologna thanks to the efforts of guerilla gardeners.
The environmental activists will be planting tulip bulbs in the city’s neglected public spaces on 7 October as part of the third International Tulip Guerrilla Gardening Day that aims to create a positive form of tulipomania around the globe. Italy’s Fante di Fiori (Gardening Foot Soldiers) will lead the planting en masse in an effort to brighten up sad-looking verges, roundabouts, empty tree pits and so on with a splash of natural colour. Last year, Bologna’s Terra Di Nettuno guerrilla-gardening group participated in the annual event. Tulips bulbs have been chosen because of the variety of colours when they flower, need no tending, bloom year after year and are easy to plant.
Fante di Fiori has completed various guerrilla missions in the past, including ‘Operazione Yellow Submarine’ (Operation Yellow Submarine) for International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day on 1 May 2012.
Guerilla gardening is catching on all over Italy and the world, and the results of their efforts have been seen in New York, London, Tbilisi, Stockholm and Beirut. World-recognised expert on the practice and author of ‘On Guerrilla Gardening’, British guerilla gardener Richard Reynolds, points out on his website: “Thousands of people walk past guerilla gardens every day all over the world. But few have any idea that they thrive there without permission, tolerated by the landowner either through ignorance or because of a supportive blind eye or quiet nudge and a wink instead of formal agreement for fear local tolerance would create dangerous precedent for anarchic urban creativity.â€
Reynolds will be speaking about guerilla gardening in Milan on 19 October at the High Green Tech Symposium conference at MADE Expo. This year’s theme is ‘Next Landscapes’.
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