A subversive urban agricultural group in San Francisco is turning ornamental trees into fruit-producing surprises for the local population but while technically breaking the law. A simple incision allows industrious grafters to add living branches to the mix; these scions heal in place then effectively become part of the existing tree.

A fresher form of guerilla gardening, traditionally carried out through seed bombs and other surreptitious planting techniques, this approach makes existing plants yield free produce.

Organized by Tara Hui, Margaretha Haughwout and Ian Pollock, Guerrilla Grafters leaves subtle hints in the form color-coded tape behind to mark their work, eschewing maps to avoid detection.

While the city has over 10,000 apple, plum, pear and other fruit trees (and 100,000 public trees in total), these are intentionally rendered sterile to avoid making a public mess or attracting animals. The existence of these sterile plant species makes guerrilla grafting interventions all the more difficult to spot, since they are simply added to extant greenery and take time to bear fruit.

The group’s novel form of civil disobedience begins to address issues of food scarcity and accessibility, raising edible fruits but perhaps also questions about secondary effects, like fallen fruit creating street clutter. At the same time, fruit is expensive, many who go hungry in the city need to have their situation addressed and this activity raises awareness.

Their website also provides tips on ideal species combinations and grafting strategies, including the instruction manual shown above. The Guerrilla Grafters “graft fruit bearing branches onto non-fruit bearing, ornamental fruit trees. Over time, delicious, nutritious fruit is made available to urban residents through these grafts. We aim to prove that a culture of care can be cultivated from the ground up. We aim to turn city streets into food forests, and unravel civilization one branch at a time.”

In a quest to evoke a faster fix from city authorities, a lone street artist going by the name Wanksy is highlighting holes in the ground with (NSFW) spray paintings sharing one thing in common: the rough but instantly recognizable shape of a phallus.

Like Hanksy, Wanksy is a play on Banksy, a world-renowned art activist. Found all around Manchester, England, Wanksy’s penis-shaped pothole sketches are perhaps crude but they serve more than one point. First, they provoke public calls to officials to clean them up while also filling in the holes. Second, but equally important for the safety of the artist, the phallus represents an easy-to-draw figure that can be sketched quickly with less risk of getting hit bye a vehicle. Third, the rough markings serve as interim warnings to drivers who might not see a water-filled hole at night.

Though the paint washes away over time, making these temporary, this response from a local council member shows that the powers that be are not particularly amused: “Has this person, for just one second, considered how families with young children must feel when they are confronted with these obscene symbols as they walk to school? Not only is this vandalism, but it’s also counter-productive. Every penny that we have to spend cleaning off this graffiti is a penny less that we have to spend on actually repairing the potholes.”

The notion of highlighting or filling in potholes by activists takes many forms beyond this novel approach, including a Chicago tile artist who fills in holes with mosaics, a guerrilla gardener who plants pansies in these street voids and even a pothole robin hood who steals asphalt from the city to fill in gaps with his own work and time. In the grand scheme, one could argue that this newest contributor is somewhat juvenile, but if it solves a real-world urban infrastructure problem, it is hard not to smile at least a little at his attempt to lighten the mood while fixing city streets.

If city officials won’t do their part to make public spaces more fun, efficient, useful, comfortable and creative, citizens will take matters into their own hands. DIY urbanism, or ‘hacktivism,’ is the practice of altering urban environments in ways that aren’t officially sanctioned, whether by turning vacant lots into temporary playgrounds, adding swings to bridges, seed-bombing neglected city spaces or knitting giant hats for bus stop shelters.

City Swings

The spaces under piers, beside bridges and beneath industrial remains are transformed into instant playgrounds with surreptitiously installed swings funded by The Awesome Foundation for the Arts and Sciences. The Los Angeles chapter of the group awarded its $1,000 2011 grant to artist Jeff Waldman, who chose underutilized spots around the city to install temporary swings. A similar project hung spill swings from the handrails on San Francisco’s BART public transit system, while the more complex 21 Swings project in Montreal coordinated the urban swings with music for an interactive experiment.

DIY Urban Furniture

If there aren’t comfortable places to sit and hang out in urban locales, perhaps the people should just create them, whether they turn scaffolding into instant hangouts with bracket-equipped furniture or bring specially made tables that fit perfectly onto public steps. Some temporary installations have gone so far as to create entire urban living rooms complete with couches, bookshelves and coffee tables that invite passersby to take a seat, relax, get to know each other better and enjoy impromptu musical performances. One particularly creative guerrilla seat design is simply a piece of plywood printed with an icon of a chair that attaches quickly and easily to street signs and can be folded up when not in use.

Vacant Lot Playgrounds & Hangouts

It’s incredibly frustrating when your neighborhood lacks a decent playground or public recreation space, yet multiple vacant lots surrounded by razor wire-topped fences waste away for years on end. Why should such spaces be closed off to the public when they’re not in use? Many DIY urbanism projects focus on reclaiming these spaces with non-permanent setups for community gardens, swing sets and even mini golf. Repurposing vacant lots maintains a sense of vitality and egalitarianism in the community, especially during times of economic sluggishness when planned construction projects are indefinitely delayed.

Yarn Bombing

Who wouldn’t smile at custom-crocheted sweaters for trees, phone booths and bicycles? Yarn bombing is the practice of adding knitted and crocheted additions to all sorts of public objects, just for the fun of it. Bus stops are given giant winter hats, bus seats get a lot cozier and stop signs suddenly become red flowers with the addition of green leaves and a ‘stem.’

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City Hacktivism 12 Fun Diy Urbanism Interventions

Filling shotgun shells with flower seeds is just the latest (and loudest) in a long line of designs for guerrilla gardeners. If you are looking for a little less bang for your buck than seed-swapped buckshot, you may wan to try a seed ball, bomb or grenade instead, all a bit more stealthy despite their loud-sounding names.

One throw-and-grow option for the concrete jungle is this compostable-shelled Flower Grenade packed with ryegrass, buttercups and poppies. This hardy custom-tailored mix is designed to flower in sequence for a multi-week, time-delay effect well beyond the ten seconds or so of their traditional wartime relatives.

Another cleverly-titled approach comes from Greenaid, a group intent on seeding the urban landscape with converted gumball machines rejigged to dispense seed bombs instead of sweets. Put in a quarter and receive a ball made of clay, compost and seeds to help you compact dull gray vacant lots and faded green parking medians.

These Greenaid creations are uniquely tailored to provide local wildflowers native to the areas in which they are deployed – in LA, for instance, they contain White Yarrow, California Poppy, Lupine and Blue Flax.

There are lots of other options, too, from region-oriented seed balls for sale on sites like Etsy to do-it-yourself instructions or kits to help you build your own. When it comes to guerrilla gardening, the real trick is understanding your environment and purpose, then strategically finding a solution for that particular context.

Seed bombs have long been a (non-violent) weapon of choice for guerrilla gardeners, but Flower Shells now aim to make your 12-gauge shotgun a key part of your go-green arsenal. Perhaps these will redefine ‘flower power’ for a new generation of eco-warriors, though a bad misfire might instead give new meaning to ‘pushing up daisies’.

“A personal project between art, gardening and gun smoke,” these are what they sound like: modified shotgun shells filled with seeds, all designed to make gardening more fun.

Their inventor, after “hour and hours of weeding, seeding and cutting” was working one planting meadow flower when the realization dawned: “this could be made much easier, faster, better using a shotgun. Said and done, soon I had emptied a shotgun shell of led and filled it with flower seeds.”

Encountered skepticism was turned into motivation: “I tested different seeds, different ways of closing the shell after modification, different amount of gunpowder, different angels of firing and different guns.”

A modern take on beating swords into plowshares, the project adapts devices designed to kill into ones that give life instead. “Walking through a field of meadow flowers, cornflowers, daisies and poppies an early summer sunday morning made me realize this was working. This flourishing field was my creation, it was all done with 142 shotgun shells.”