Urban "Green Thumb" Hackers Injecting Mother Nature Back Into The Streets

I think that I've been pretty fortunate living in scenic areas for the better part of my life, but there are some of us who by circumstance or choice are greeted with concrete jungles the moment that we exit our front doors. Apart from seeing occasional trees springing forth from fenced-in plots of dirt or precious clusters of flowers that someone has carefully tended to along a sidewalk (with fingers crossed), landscaping can often be more man-made than natural. Instead of neatly manicured gardens and fields of wildflowers, one might instead see city blocks filled with storefronts and various commercial buildings, rendering the color "green" a distant memory. While there's nothing particularly wrong with that, even the most die hard urbanites can on occasion long for the comforts of Mother Nature -- and sometimes a trip to the tiny landlocked strip of grass in your neighborhood known as a park just won't do. 

Toronto artists Eric Cheung and Sean Martindale sympathize with the plight of modern city dwellers, so they meld nature with the pre-existing remnants of our consumer culture in a very original way. Their form of guerilla gardening, affectionally termed an "urban hack," reinjects life and a touch of nature into otherwise neglected public spaces. Wielding sharp box cutters and staple guns, the team slices makeshift cone-shaped planter "pouches" out of poster-covered utility poles and walls, filling them with soil, an assortment of flowers and a generous sprinkling of water. They are partial to illegal ads, avoiding anything that promotes not-for-profit organizations or awareness campaigns. If necessary, they reinforce some of their garden pockets with extra scraps of urban posters anchored with wheat paste. Their collaboration is an effort to "activate public space" and introduce nature "to the urban environment in ways that might encourage others to do the same."

They are so serious about their "pro-activism" greenification efforts that they have gone as far as to post template "how tos" on their blog at posterpocketplants.blogspot.com. In addition to actively encouraging interested environmentalists to spread the word or dive into their own poster pocket projects, Cheung and Martindale also continue updating their blog with various other guerilla gardening efforts happening around the world, some even spawned by them. Of course, even the best laid plans are sometimes thwarted by ignorance -- they have acknowledged mean spirited thieves tearing down their planter pockets, sometimes even within the span of just one day. Those that manage to avoid the meddling hands of ne'er do wells can still be subject to survival challenges even though Cheung and Martindale return to the scene of their many installations to water and check on their progress. They've found through trial, error and great expense that certain varieties have a tough time thriving and they openly acknowledge that plant lifespans can be clipped short. Nevertheless, they hope that as more people are exposed to their public planting installations, the more likely that their message will take root and grow.