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Radical Gardening

Richard Lemmer | 20.04.12

Resistance is fertile, if you believe the radical gardener. Protest gardening is emerging as a new craze. Greenhouse PR visited radical bookstore Housmans to listen to Professor George McKay discuss his latest book, Radical Gardening. The book gives an overview of gardening as a part of political activity, discussing everything from the violence of the suffragettes firebombing Kew Gardens to the more serene peace garden movements. And if you like your puns academic and groan inducing, you’ll love slogans like Avant Gardening, Sod it!, and Horti-counter-culture.

  Whilst there is much in the book and McKay’s philosophy that is best left to common room discussions, radical gardening reveals interesting trends that go beyond the garden fence. Discussing his latest book, McKay pointed out that it his only book to have received a positive review in the Daily Telegraph. The Guardian highly recommends the book. McKay also pointed out that the guerrilla gardening movement and unused land reclaimed as gardens has received praise from the Daily Mail. Even the Duchess of Cornwall has done a spot of guerrilla gardening. Radical gardening must be doing something pretty special if it can get royalty and anarchists working together.

But McKay’s book doesn’t just deal with the practical and political activity of gardening. No academic worth their ivory tower could resist analysing the garden as a symbol. McKay uses a vague definition of gardens and gardening, but it highlights some interesting issues, such as why the red poppy appeal is so successful compared to the use of white poppies for pacifist causes. This moves the conversation into discussing how we perceive gardens - and this is where business begins to show an interest. It would be a costly mistake to be dismissive of flower power. In 2000, BP spent over £4.6m designing its new flower like-logo - a design that cost over £50m to implement on new and old stock. And whilst BP has clearly understood the positive connotations of the natural world, it needs to understand that its garden of logos is no safer from harm than the vandalised gardens of 19th century landed gentry. In an age of increasing IT acumen amongst the population, it wasn’t difficult to for Greenpeace to crowd source a subversion of the BP's new logo.

Radical Gardening contains lots of interesting actions and creations using gardening to draw attention to all sorts of issues. One example highlights the work of artist Paul Harfleet, who plants pansies at the sites of homophobic attacks.

So is it time more people - and businesses - joined McKay is saying "sod it" and joined the "horti-counter-culture"?

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gardening, george mckay, bp, logo, radical gardening