Meet the guerilla gardener who has spent 15 years sprucing up his drab local area
- 11 months ago
Meet 'Plantsy' - the guerilla gardener who has spent 15 years single-handedly sprucing up his drab local area.
Matthew Bradby, 51, has made it his mission to bring some colour to Tottenham, north London.
Over 15 years Matthew reckons he has spent hundreds planting several hundred bulbs and plants like daffodils, crocuses and crab apple trees in 20 different spots across 120 miles.
He regularly heads out armed with his trusty trowel to plant on barren grassy areas and road verges.
Oxford-educated Matthew, a charity communications worker, says his biggest enemies are local councils.
Mean-spirited workers regularly mow over his landscaping efforts despite the life they bring to unloved areas, he claims
But Matthew always meets these setbacks with a fresh horticultural counter-offensive - planting more bulbs and seeds.
And he is now plotting to plant an entire hedge in front of an “ugly” iron railing by a nearby A-road.
Matthew said: “Guerrilla gardening is deciding to do gardening on property that strictly speaking doesn’t belong to you and would typically be public property or common land.
“I think it could also be private land if the private land wasn’t being maintained.
“Bulbs like daffodils and crocuses are one of the best ways of doing it because you can go out with a trowel in autumn and stick those bulbs in all sorts of places and nobody knows they’re there until they come up in March or April.
“They’re very resilient so people can trample on them and because they’re a bulb they retreat underground and then the next spring they come up again.
“Some of them I’ve planted have lasted for 10 or 15 years despite being mowed and all sorts and they carry on coming up.
“Whenever I walk past them it always makes me smile.
“Literally all you need is a trowel and that’s it. I wouldn’t mind spending £10 or £20 on bulbs, who knows I might spend £50 on bits and bobs depending on what I saw in a garden centre.
“Things like fruit trees are nice to plant as well.
“There are a couple of crab apple trees that I have planted in public verges where there had been trees before but they died so I put others in.
“If you can stop the local authority from mowing them then they can do really well and people really appreciate them, even local councillors.
“Sometimes other people say to me ‘I’m going to do this, that and the other’ and I have to tell them contractors are going to come with mowers and mow everything.
“The biggest risk for guerrilla gardening isn’t so much the vandals – it’s the local authorities and landscape contractors because they just come and mow things over.
“In the last few years there has been a little patch of land not far from where I am and it has this great big galvanised iron railing running down it and it’s just ugly.
“There’s an A-road on one side and flats on the other. The local authority planted a couple of trees that the residents’ group paid for but I was thinking a really good idea would be to plant a hedge down that railing.
Matthew Bradby, 51, has made it his mission to bring some colour to Tottenham, north London.
Over 15 years Matthew reckons he has spent hundreds planting several hundred bulbs and plants like daffodils, crocuses and crab apple trees in 20 different spots across 120 miles.
He regularly heads out armed with his trusty trowel to plant on barren grassy areas and road verges.
Oxford-educated Matthew, a charity communications worker, says his biggest enemies are local councils.
Mean-spirited workers regularly mow over his landscaping efforts despite the life they bring to unloved areas, he claims
But Matthew always meets these setbacks with a fresh horticultural counter-offensive - planting more bulbs and seeds.
And he is now plotting to plant an entire hedge in front of an “ugly” iron railing by a nearby A-road.
Matthew said: “Guerrilla gardening is deciding to do gardening on property that strictly speaking doesn’t belong to you and would typically be public property or common land.
“I think it could also be private land if the private land wasn’t being maintained.
“Bulbs like daffodils and crocuses are one of the best ways of doing it because you can go out with a trowel in autumn and stick those bulbs in all sorts of places and nobody knows they’re there until they come up in March or April.
“They’re very resilient so people can trample on them and because they’re a bulb they retreat underground and then the next spring they come up again.
“Some of them I’ve planted have lasted for 10 or 15 years despite being mowed and all sorts and they carry on coming up.
“Whenever I walk past them it always makes me smile.
“Literally all you need is a trowel and that’s it. I wouldn’t mind spending £10 or £20 on bulbs, who knows I might spend £50 on bits and bobs depending on what I saw in a garden centre.
“Things like fruit trees are nice to plant as well.
“There are a couple of crab apple trees that I have planted in public verges where there had been trees before but they died so I put others in.
“If you can stop the local authority from mowing them then they can do really well and people really appreciate them, even local councillors.
“Sometimes other people say to me ‘I’m going to do this, that and the other’ and I have to tell them contractors are going to come with mowers and mow everything.
“The biggest risk for guerrilla gardening isn’t so much the vandals – it’s the local authorities and landscape contractors because they just come and mow things over.
“In the last few years there has been a little patch of land not far from where I am and it has this great big galvanised iron railing running down it and it’s just ugly.
“There’s an A-road on one side and flats on the other. The local authority planted a couple of trees that the residents’ group paid for but I was thinking a really good idea would be to plant a hedge down that railing.