RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE PRACTICE OF GUERRILLA GARDENING IN THE CARIBBEAN

VARIOUS readers expressed opinions

regarding this practice. I started

(without knowing it during the 80's) and 

have continued for the last 30 months.

THE first consideration is soil type, if you want to be effective.  My guerrilla scenarios have two..  Mostly sand, as our house and former San Carlos Hospital or clay with construction refuse hard as hell  with tons of rocks. Keep that in mind.

For clay types, you need tools. If planting  Pandanus, Tamarindus indica or anything with a significant root ball.  If planting by seeds is better to act after the weed whackers have attacked, leaving the ground bare.  Both conditions of soil will improve your attack after it has rained or before.  Consider that plants/trees I suggest will survive without irrigation.

Any kind of vegetation in my urban context needs to tolerate heat, salt breeze, drought, lack of nutrients and pests. That is why I keep an inventory from my collection showing excellent survival rates.

SORRY. If you depend on nurseries to buy plants as in England, USA and such forget it, it will not work over here. Collect from your own flora as I do, watch, observe juat happens to provide pertinent advise.

INVENTORY

not mentioned

Merremia quinquefolia

Ipomoea quamoclit/aegyptia

Passiflora foetida

Antigonum leptopus

Clitora ternatea

Centrosema pubescens

Mirabilis siciliana

Cosmos sulphureous

Turnera ulmiforme/diffusa 

Final words.

Almost everything mentioned is self seeding, however it is hard to collect seeds from Turneras.  I suggest to plant them no taller than eight inches.  If just one survives,  five to ten will grow in ninety days or less depending on conditions. These small bushes are so resistant, they survive in minuscule cracks in concrete, spread by wind.

In terms of aesthetics, some considerations are worth mentioning. Hospital San Carlos is just concrete walls and asphalt.  There is only an  18 inches wide, 75 long strip of mostly sand, between one and the other as you may observe on the walls.

The messy look, adds to the beauty, hiding the asphalt and reducing heat refraction, making life difficult in addition, for those graffiti 'artists' into tagging. Local insects, reptiles and birds benefit either from the pollen, nectar or flowers for feeding.

Apaga i vamonoh...