Channel Ten has dropped reality shows like Big Brother in an attempt to move into a new realm of reality television, one which in an age post-The Chasers sees activism get the ‘reality’ treatment. Enter Guerrilla Gardeners, a DIY gardening show which takes Backyard Blitz on to the suburban streets, adding a healthy dose of cloak and dagger… just enough to get the adrenaline pumping.
The premise is simple: a crack team of landscape architects, horticulturalists and keen gardeners find an unused or derelict public space and transform it without any council permission or approval of any kind. Included in this team is Mickie, someone who is not unfamiliar with transforming public spaces without approval, something he has done as professional artist for the last 15 years.
‘Basically they need someone like me to come up with cover disguises and hair-brained ideas, plus someone who could bring in more arty ideas and installation ideas so it wasn’t just about plants and gardening,’ Mickie explained. ‘Some people might say it has nothing to do with gardening but I believe it has a lot to do with creative landscapes.’
With Mickie on board the show becomes a touch more colourful. For example, one Guerrilla Gardening installation has seen the team complete a garden beneath a bridge, troll and all. Another saw them install a garden while dressed as a prison chain gang. But the pièce d’résistance? The roundabout they declared a micro-nation in the Sydney suburb of Sutherland.
‘We called it The Republic of Gardenia,’ Mickie laughed, ‘and even made up passports and had rubber stamps from immigration and erected a flagpole and raised our own flag. And when the council came we told them they didn’t have any authority to step on our newly claimed nation.’
It wasn’t until the eleventh hour that the council shut down the entire project, by which point all of the local residents had already gathered in support of what the Guerrilla Gardeners were doing. But to make matters worse for themselves, the council decided to take a heavy handed approach and dismantled the entire installation, all $2500 worth of free plants. They then issued the show with a $600 fine.
‘It was a portrait of council madness,’ Mickie explained. ‘They had been given something for free and then they decide to pull it out. They’ve made matters worse for themselves because local residents are left wondering what the hell their council is doing.’
The term ‘guerrilla gardening’ has been around since the ’70s when Liz Christy and the Green Guerrillas reclaimed land in New York City for community gardening projects. In more recent times, Richard Reynolds popularised the movement through his blog site www.guerrillagardening.org as well as his wildly successful book On Guerrilla Gardening.
Despite the longevity of guerrilla gardening as an underground and then web-based activist movement, it’s only just made it to television. With most popular TV gardening programs based on the home gardener or makeover style shows, how exactly did this altruistic approach to gardening make it to the prime time slot of 8.30 on a Wednesday night? ‘It occurred to me that a really strong precursor to this show was The Chaser,’ Mickie mused.
‘What The Chaser did at APEC as a political activism stunt was suddenly entertaining to the mainstream. It surpassed what most activists actually are able to do themselves by ridiculing excessive authority in government and making it absolutely palatable to the mainstream. So anti-authoritarianism was suddenly something that had always been there in the Australian psyche but television had never really tapped into.’
Mickie’s advice to any potential guerrilla gardeners out there is simple: grab the spade by the balls! ‘Do it in the daytime,’ Mickie explained. ‘Be totally ballsy and totally out there. Look like you’re meant to be doing what you’re doing and you’ll get away with it.’
Guerrilla Gardening screens on Channel Ten on Wednesday night at 8.30pm.
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
.
