Planting a pear tree in a park in central Stockholm.
I am still in London, making interviews for the very first issue of the climate magazine that I am working with. Yesterday we met people engaging in “Guerilla gardening”, a loose movement of people who plant flowers and vegetables in abandoned pieces of land.
Just before leaving Sweden I was invited to a meeting of their Swedish equivalent. A network which calls themselves “Real Growth” planted a pear tree in a park in central Stockholm. I was surprised to see the amount of people that showed up, helping to plant the tree and bringing their own plants and seeds.
Want to inspire others
One of the organizers explained to me that the idea behind all this is not planting as much as possible, but showing people the possibility of growing edible plants in public spaces and encouraging them to start doing it themselves. In his view, cities have to try to become more self-sufficient on food. Transporting food involves big emissions of greenhouse gases, contributing to climate change. The effects of climate change also puts higher pressure on societies of being resilient and less dependent on the use of fossil fuels. Guerilla gardening, he said, is a way of both raising the question and actually doing something about it.
Good start
Even if making cities like Stockholm self-sufficient on food is a goal which remains far away, I think that it would be a good start to be able to grab a fresh apple from a tree on the way home from work or adding a few cherries and nuts from the park when you are having picnic. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?
