The Gangsta Gardener

Can a gardener be called a creator or innovator? If a gardener can't, I don't know who can. Growing life from dirt and soil...doesn't get any more creative than that.

He considers himself an artist that brings the beauty of nature to neglected streets. "Real G's Grow Food" says he and he is Ron Finley, a real G. He is making a true difference in the world by educating communities, growing plants in vacant lots, and creating beauty in the hood. This guy is on a mission.

Everybody should have access to fresh healthy food in their neighborhood, everybody should have a clue of where what they eat comes from and have a more direct rapport with what they put in their mouths.

You can find more about guerrilla gardening and Ron on this lovely article

Ron lives in south-central Los Angeles, now South Los Angeles, in an area considered to be a food desert with plenty of fast food joints, liquor stores, and vacant lots. He started growing food on the parkway in front of his house, a strip of land between the street and the sidewalk, because he couldn't find food that wasn't impregnated with pesticides without having to drive 20, 30 minutes outside of his area. For that he almost got a warrant to be arrested by the city council. He fought back, raised some funds, got an article published on a major paper that caught the attention of a lot of people, petitions were signed, and minds were changed.

That's how he started his journey as the Gangsta Gardener.

After that he initiated many projects of this nature in his neighborhood and elsewhere turning public unused spaces into beautiful gardens, beautifying concrete with plants, rebuilding the connection between food and people, educating children by changing their relationship with food from something they simply find in a store or in a fast food joint, into something they see growing and they can recognize and appreciate.

If a child grows kale, a child eats kale. -Ron Finley

Industrial farming and industrial agriculture are among the leading causes of pollution, climate change, and soil depletion. Imagine a world where all of us instead of getting 100% of our produce from supermarkets we got only let's say 50%, and the rest from communal gardens or even personal home gardens, and from regenerative organic local farms.

Watch this super poignant very short interview of the man. By the way, this bit made me laugh: "Do you consider yourself to be an underdog? Underdog? No I am superdog!"

How about this, the number one cause of mortality worldwide is cardiac disease. The number one solution for that is a whole foods plant-based diet, possibly made of locally grown and organic produce.

Furthermore, one of the best ways to ensure good health is a very diverse gut microbiome, the microbiome loves fiber which comes from plants and way better if they are fresh. The easiest way to have them fresh is to take them from the garden and if you have one on your street or in your backyard, that will make it all easier to stay healthy. Plus you get strawberries...inside joke for those who watched his Ted talk below.

To change the community you have to change the composition of the soil. We are the soil. - Ron Finley

This is the Ted talk that made me discover him.

He was turning a food desert, a concrete jungle, a bunch of barren strips of dirt into a sight to behold. Street gardens that bore fruits and vegetables for all to take, basically free food for the community. By doing so he was bringing the community back to life, creating engagement, teaching people how to do the same, starting initiatives involving children, teenagers, the elderly, and recovering addicts too. It started to become a thing and he became a sensation around the world inspiring others to do the same.

Growing your own food is like printing your own money - Ron Finley

Imagine initiatives like these in each city on earth and imagine the positive impact it would have on communities, on people's health, on the health of the planet, on the aesthetic of cities. It has been happening already before Ron, guerrilla gardening is not a new thing, but after him, there has been a surge. Globally a lot of people took notice. He is making Gardening sexy.

This is his website by the way:

Planting gardens aren’t just positive for the environment, it creates social justice, it helps build people’s minds and it shows people how to be free. - Ron Finley (from an interview on worldwarzero.com)

Ron Finley has been probably the most recognizable face of guerrilla gardening in the last decade, screw that, he has been for many people the face of gardening, period. He is at the forefront of this, he teaches it, spreads the message on stages, on social media, and he is making a lot of folks around the world wanting to pick up a shovel and start planting some shit. He is indeed making gardening gangsta, turning the word into a positive, he is making it sexy and cool to garden, to care, to make good choices, to be healthy and involved in your community, and to be conscious about the food you eat and your role in the ecosystem.

He is so big that he even has a Masterclass series.

He is Ron Finley the awesome Gangsta Gardner and he is the person that inspired me to reconsider the way I see gardening and growing my own food, from something I viewed as awesome but better left to others, into something that I am now considering to start doing myself. I am already almost totally into a whole foods plant-based vegan-ish diet and lifestyle, so growing my own food seems like a step I will want to take at some point in the future, for my health and the health of the planet.

Watching Ron Finley's videos and reading articles about him really turned me on to the idea. Who knows, maybe I'll start my own urban gangsta garden so that I can have delicious produce for me and my peops and further reduce my environmental impact. If that happens, it would have all been Ron Finley's fault, because he is my gardening hero.

Kajo

PS: If you want more of him here is a Masterclass live interview