Spring has sprung – officially, at least – as green-thumbed gardeners shop for seeds, shrubs and soil… but not at these abandoned garden centers.

Speaking of green thumbs, the Green Thumb garden center in Sequim, WA appeared to have it all: a landscaped back lot, a shaded gazebo, a sign that advertised their acceptance of VISA and Master Charge cards… wait, Master “Charge”??

Yeah, the Green Thumb garden center would appear to have faded to black some time ago – or, they just weren’t finicky about updating their signage. Maybe both. Flickr member Derek Lyons visited the has-been horticultural emporium in August of 2010, escaping with these images while avoiding the ire of a really creepy chain-saw sculpture.

Looking Down

House and Garden? More like Houses OR Gardens, and when it comes to this abandoned garden center in Lower Shiplake, UK, the houses have won the battle. Flickr member 261066 snapped the Engbers Garden Centre in July of 2014, acquiring the dizzying overhead view from DJI Phantom 2 Vision Quadcopter drone. Within a couple of years, a new housing division would have sprouted up on this site.

Row, not Grow

There’s not much growing at the abandoned Row Farm Nursery Ltd in Westbury, Wiltshire, UK. Flickr member Nick (nicksarabi) visited the former shrubbery market in January of 2010.

Even the evergreens are struggling to maintain their chlorophyll levels under the wan winter sun, though lack of maintenance is surely a contributing factor. The photographer doesn’t explain when the wilted Wiltshire center closed, or why it’s still stocked with salvageable fertilizers and other commercial plant products.

Boulevard Sunset

Boulevard Gardens was a garden center in Columbus, OH, operating for almost seven decades before finally throwing in the trowel. Flickr member jinjian liang (liangjinjian) expressed disappointment the shop was shut, recalling a “help wanted” ad posted in the store window earlier in 2009.

Flickr member Varjohaltia snapped the shuttered sapling salon in July of 2010, mere months before the abandoned garden center was demolished.

According to Flickr member Greg Phelps (That Car), Boulevard Gardens ended its seven-decade run in late 2008, and was bought by the neighboring Union Cemetery at the end of 2010. Looks like the “planting” will continue, though hopefully nothing will grow.

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Face Plants 10 Lifeless Abandoned Garden Centers

IKEA recently launched a hydroponic gardening system to allow people to grow fresh produce at home (without soil or sunlight) and has just unveiled a similar system under development that is aimed at helping restaurants raise ingredients in-house.

The KRYDDA/VÄXER hydroponic garden lets sprout seeds without soil using absorbent foam plugs that keep plants moist (without over-watering, thanks to a built-in sensor). Germinated seeds can then be transferred to pots fitted into a growing tray featuring a solar lamp. The system is designed to be easy to use for even inexpert gardeners.

Meanwhile, in another bit to expand their sustainability model beyond furniture, furnishings and fixtures, IKEA has teamed up with Space10 to create The Farm, an aquaponic garden system for restaurants. A prototype is live and working the basement of Space10’s office in Copenhagen, and the two companies are planning to develop the system further for mass production and commercial deployment.

Few customers realize that IKEA is actually already one of the largest restaurant chains in the world, selling over a billion Euros of food annually. It is well-positioned to push for changes in the food supply chain (photos by Kristine Lofgren for Inhabitat).

The Farm prototype can even create a complete burger (of sorts) on site, specifically: a “bugburger” made of mealworm, beetroot and gluten and top with freshly-grown herbs and lettuce. Aside from this particular (and peculiar) delicacy, however, the design is aimed at bringing as much of the food production process in-house, similar to a recent system developed in Germany allowing grocers to raise and sell their own fresh produce.

On multiple fronts, IKEA is changing the face of the farm-to-table movement, operating in parallel to larger urban vertical farming systems to generate products that are cheap and accessible, making gardening something that any city dweller or restaurant owner can dig into.

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.”

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.”