Seed Bombs!

Last Saturday I was lucky enough to get invited to help run a seed bomb workshop at  Haringay Independence Day. It was a perfect sunny summer day and we had our hands dirty for most of it, as well as getting to attend other workshops, jam sessions, swap gardening knowledge and give and get stuff for free. But let’s cut to the chase; what on earth is a seed bomb?

A seedbomb is a convenient way of sowing seed on derelict land in the hope of improving the environment either aesthetically, or by improving the soil, by encouraging native wildflowers or even planting vegetables or other edible goodies. Seed bombing probably came out of the Community Garden Movement that sprung up in New York in the 1970′s, when ordinary people decided to do something positive about the derelict land that blighted the city’s heart. They planted clandestine gardens in vacant lots, utilising seed bombs as a start when access to the desired land was proving difficult.  New Yorkers were not the first to practice the creative art of Guerilla Gardening which has a venerable history wherever derelict land and human need have coincided, but seed bombing was a technique the New Yorkers made their own.  So, what makes a good seed bomb, and why is it a “bomb” exactly?

A seedbomb consists of three things – the seeds, a pinch of peat free compost or topsoil, and the outer bomb casing for want of a better description. In our demonstration we used London clay for this,  which is perfect because it’s free (If you live in London you just dig down a metre or so beyond all the builders rubble and crap and there it is, a rich seam of beautiful clay) and also because when it’s dry, it becomes brittle and shatters easily. If you do not have a local clay soil, you can use newspaper pulped in a blender to make papier mache mixture instead. I guess you could even use a mixture of flour and water…

So, you need:-

• Clay or papier mache
• a small amount of rich topsoil or peat free compost
• seeds of your choice
• a bit of paper to wrap each seedbomb in

Grab a lump of clay or papier mache about the size of a golf ball or a little smaller, and roll it into a ball. Next, poke your finger hard into the clay or papier mache until you’ve made a hole. Then, put a small pinch of your topsoil or compost into the hole… it only needs to be a tiny amount. Now you are ready to add your seeds – you can mix up your flower varieties if you like but a favourite seed bomb flower of mine is poppies. Once you’ve tucked the seeds into the hole, close it up by smoothing clay over the hole or adding more papier mache, and roll the ball in your hands again to make it round. Then put your seedbomb somewhere safe to dry, like a sunny window ledge.

Make as many as you like! When your seedbomb is completely dry, it is ready to use.

How do I use it? And you still haven’t explained why it’s a bomb!

Well,  seed grenade is probably a more appropriate name, since what you are going to do is throw your seedbomb on the ground really hard in order to make it shatter. In the act of shattering, your seeds and their little bit of nutrient soil are dispersed much better than if you tried to sow them by hand and it’s much less fiddly… you can plant hundreds of seeds on the move and in an instant – you don’t even have to break your stride! So once your papier mache or clay balls are completely dry, put them in a bag in your pocket and go out looking for targets.

Where should I seedbomb? Any small neglected patch of land. Be creative in your choices! The dirt around a street tree might be a good place, or the long grass near some railings where the mower can never reach, or a neglected municipal flower bed. Grass verges around car parks that need brightening up. Traffic islands and roadside verges are great fun to seedbomb from a bicycle and the extra speed means they explode all the better! If you don’t have time to tend your garden – throw some down there!

Is there anywhere I shouldn’t seedbomb? Seedbombing is best done in neglected places frequented by humans – nature reserves or wild places should not be seedbombed! They may have delicate ecosystems that could get disrupted by introducing new plants.

What kind of seed should I use? Plants that don’t need a lot of looking after are best. If you just want to add a splash of colour to a neglected spot I would always recommend poppies. Poppies are a seedbombers friend because they thrive in neglected soil and wherever you live in the world there will probably be a native species of poppy you can use seeds from, so you are helping wildlife too! In fact, using native wildflowers is always better,  because they don’t need looking after and will not create a pest problem.  In the UK I’d recommend looking for a wildflower meadow mix as these will contain beautiful colourful plants that will do well in poor soil and with no extra effort once sown.

It didn’t shatter properly! Don’t worry, you can help it on it’s way by crushing the seedbomb underfoot if you can get to it; the weather, passing animals and insects will probably finish the dispersal for you. If it’s at least got a good crack running through it do nothing; the next time it rains the water will split it apart and disperse it naturally.

But what if my seeds grow and the council comes along and mows everything up, that would be horrible! The trick is be prolific in your seedbombing and don’t be too precious – of all the millions of seeds created by nature only the tiniest percentage survive to become thriving plants and for whatever reason this may well be true of your seed bomb babies. Don’t be downhearted… keep trying! Even if only a few plants make it you’ve brightened the world a tiny bit. There is a lovely saying – “If I knew the world would end tomorrow I would plant an apple tree today”.

We made hundreds of seedbombs on Saturday, and there was a handful left over that nobody took away. I’m going to look out for suitable sites to bomb and report back when I’m done!

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Snow Business

A little over a week ago London was under a foot of snow with a promise of more to come, and everyone and his/her dog cheerfully bunked off to go out and enjoy it. The extra snow failed to materialise here (though it did in other parts of the country) and what snow we had was gone all too soon,  but the carnival atmosphere on that snowy hill won’t be forgotten by me in a hurry.

R and I walked to Parliament Hill on Hampstead Heath in a thick flurry of snow, visibility was poor and we didn’t get the hoped for view from there of the whole of London in its snowy blanket. Still, we did have the fun of playing together with strangers in the snow - snowball fights, screaming chaos on improvised sledges made from tea trays, dustbin lids, estate agents sighnboards and more than one bathtub sent hurtling down the slopes to rowdy shrieks and cheers.  Anyway enough words, check out the film and pictures… there’s more to come.

Those of us on the chillier side of the world might find it hard to imagine the terrible events taking place in Australia. We are lucky that the worst so many of us are having to deal with right now is a little snow. Please, if you can, donate to the Red Cross Australian Bushfires Appeal.

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Cold and frosty morning

This morning there was a fairly hard frost in London; I went to stand on the fire escape at the back of our house to admire it and was just in time to see the sun rise over the rooftops. Morning is very atmospheric here in winter – few birds sing and there is an apparent stillness, but concentrate a little and the roar of a vast city can be heard beyond the silent gardens.

I don’t often look back at my old posts but something made me do so today and I was surprised and a little touched to see that I had pretty much looked at and written about a similar scene (almost to the day) of a midwinter dawn last December. Little rituals; the steaming cup held in both hands against the cold, breathing in the sharp frosty air, the lemony dawn sky.

See more skies from around the world… visit Skywatch Friday!

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The Cloths Of Heaven

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

William Butler Yeats

Thanks to Roadgurl5 for introducing me to Skywatch Friday

For more sky photos from all over the world, go visit Sky Watch Friday!

EDIT:- So many of you lovely Skywatch people who are commenting here and have Blogger blogs… I can’t return the favour because of your comment settings! Please don’t think I don’t appreciate your visit, I truly do. Thank you!

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Beneath the pavement, the Beach

This weekend we felt giddy with summer and took a spontaneous day trip along the South Bank. There is usually something entertaining happening there; this time it outdid itself. It was the day of the Coin Street festival, an intimate, quirky event that saw Polish experimental musicians rubbing shoulders with riotous gypsy bands and local heavy metal kids. The Meltdown festival hosted by Massive Attack was opening at the Royal Festival Hall, there was a wacky architecture event on at the Hayward gallery, plus a glorious exhibition about coral reefs, impossible mathematical objects and crochet. The sun was out, the sky was a riot of restless cloud, the pavements full of happy, strolling, culture guzzling people.

But what lies below the thronged pavements of the Thames Embankment? On this particular Saturday old lady Thames was having a particularly low tide, so a glance over the embankment railings revealed a pocket of golden sandy beach. It’s true that most of the wide and neglected Thames beach is shingle and quite a bit is mud, but it seems strange to me that aside from the work of these sculptors even the sandy parts lie utterly deserted. I have always loved walking along this secret shore, but the tide has never been out as far as this on the other occasions I’ve come to explore it.

We raced down the stone steps to beach level and walked the relatively short stretch from Waterloo bridge to the Tate Modern, revelling in the unique views to be had from this unusual angle. The tide must have gone out by about twenty or thirty metres, revealing bridge supports and hidden structures built below street and river level, invisible to the oblivious crowds on the busy pavements above. A pier which normally juts out into deep water was completely exposed, and St Paul’s Cathedral and the glass towers of the city could be glimpsed through its massive legs.

One of the fun things about such low tides (if you are like me) is the chance to examine the strand line. The Thames is no longer the filthy stinking river it once was; it is home once more to (reintroduced) salmon, and quite fabulously, a rare colony of seahorses has been found in deepest industrial Dagenham. Even in the very centre of this great Metropolis the water is reasonably clean. Lady Thames is grand enough to be, to some extent, still untamed. A serious beachcomber on the Thames is supposed to obtain a license – the swift tides and estuarine mud further downriver can be treacherous and if you are to spend long hours gleaning the shores you need to understand the dangers. Just as important, many items of historical significance can be found and it is important that such discoveries are recorded. Those licensed to search the shores are known as Mudlarks. As well as antique bottles, ceramic shards and old clay pipes, Roman coins have been known to get washed up on the strand.

I’ve never been that lucky but I don’t care; it’s all interesting to me. True, there is as on any shore in the world now, a certain amount of plastic rubbish (I have helped with the clearing up after a Reclaim the Beach festival in the past but sadly I rarely remember to take a bin bag for litter picking on my solo jaunts) but the items stranded are fascinating in themselves. Why are there so many ceramic shards in one particular place – was there a china factory there? The pub a couple of hundred metres upstream could explain why there is a large amount of brown and green glass below their establishment, but I doubt that they’d know anything about the large quantities of delicately coloured art glass that is to be found all along the stretch we walked. One part of the shore is littered with eroded but still distinctive yellow London clay bricks – a spoil heap for a building site, or was there once a brickworks in the area? Are the clam and oyster shells a tip off that these creatures are living somewhere in the river, or were they simply dumped here by a local restaurant?

We gleaned a few pretty ceramic fragments and some interesting bits of old glass, watched the cormorants and herring gulls and feral pigeons squabble and wheel, idly turned over a few stones, then climbed the steps back up into the other world, the world of busy crowds and conventional city views.

After exploring all the good clean civilized fun to be had in the Tate and the Royal Festival Hall, we re-emerged to find the sun had gone down. In a mere two hours the tide had turned, the water having risen almost to the level of the pavements, and the buildings and bridges were lit up and shining as if gilded. The places where we had stood in sunny daylight were now under twenty metres of black water, the mysteries that the river had briefly shared now taken back into its depths.

In this built up and heavily populated place, below the inky ripples gaudily lit by street lights, over my footsteps from this day, the fishes are now swimming.

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