Shock gardening troops attack urban eyesores

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) - They work under the cover of night, armed with seed bombs, chemical weapons and pitchforks. Their tactics are anarchistic, their attitude revolutionary. Their aim: to beautify.

An army of self-styled Guerrilla Gardeners is growing across the world, fighting to transform urban wastelands into horticultural havens. To document and encourage their victories, one of the movement's top generals has written a handbook.

"On Guerrilla Gardening", by Richard Reynolds, defines the activity as "the illicit cultivation of someone else's land".

"Our main enemies are neglect and scarcity of land," said Reynolds, a 30-year-old former advertising employee who wrote the book after his website guerrillagardening.org became a global focal point for would-be green-fingered activists.

"Land is a finite resource -- and yet areas like this are not being used. That seems crazy to me," Reynolds told Reuters.

"And if the authorities want to get in the way of that logic, then we will fight them -- but peacefully -- through showing them what we can achieve with plants."

As he spoke, Reynolds and several London-based troops were enthusiastically digging over soil in a rough patch of grass outside a tower block in the south east of the capital.

Defying darkness -- and risking arrest for criminal damage -- they continued their "attack" on the otherwise grim, grey surroundings, forking in a hefty load of compost and planting lavender and Paris daisies for a splash of colour and scent.