The guerilla gardeners of San Francisco

Brut America

These "activist gardeners" SFinBloom are on a mission to rewild neglected urban areas. And they are doing it by sprinkling wildflower seeds around town ...

Transcript

00:00You may have seen us one-wheeling around scattering native wildflower seeds in our neighborhood.

00:13I realize what an ecological desert a lot of urban areas are. If you're one of these little guys,

00:20just imagine that you're a bee and look for like the next flower or habitat or place that you can

00:25have a little drink and it's pretty far apart uh for me as a person let alone as like something

00:31like this big buzzing around. That's right. It seems like every day I turn a different corner

00:37and see another plot that I hit. I didn't even know these got this big. How's it looking Phoenix?

00:44They're amazing. These are huge.

00:59How do you sow native seeds? It's literally as simple as shaking some seeds in your hand

01:04and throwing them. That's what flowers do when they set seeds, right? They fling the seeds when

01:09the seeds are mature enough. What we like to do is we mix some rice hulls uh sterilized rice

01:15hulls in with our shakers and it's just a fun distribution method. You can put this in your

01:20pocket or your purse or something but the rice hulls help distribute the seeds a bit

01:25so that when you're sowing them they spread out.

01:39So people ask us all the time they're like how can I do this? And it's important to know

01:48what's native to your area and there's a lot of ways especially with the help of the internet

01:53and you want to stick with things that are native and non-invasive and then you want to

01:56stay away from invasives and that will change from region to region.

02:00Bum bum bum.

02:06It doesn't take very long at all. You know it's it's a walk to the post office.

02:10It's that 15 minute walk that you take to get away from your computer.

02:22A lot of gardening is like monoculture where you plant in a city, you plant a single tree,

02:28or you plant a plant and it's just its own individual plant picked for its design.

02:33The importance of planting native wildflowers is it helps the ecosystem. It's not just sure

02:40there's a positive benefit for the people who see and appreciate these plants but it's also

02:44beneficial to our insects. How did this become this become this become this?

02:59What we're doing is essentially rewilding our spaces. We're reverting them back in a little way

03:05to what they were a long time ago and then we can support the local ecosystem, the bees,

03:12butterflies, birds, all the little beneficial bugs and things like that

03:16and we're just giving them a place to hang out and eat again.

03:26We've seen the seeds we've sown blossom both literally like as in all the plants just

03:32popping up and surprising us through the neighborhood on our walks on our journeys

03:37and then also seeing the seeds that we've planted in so many other people who are doing this

03:42and it especially warms our heart when children are doing it. I think that's a small step in the

03:48right direction to fixing the climate crisis and if any generation can do it,

03:53this generation can do it. It's better to buzz together.

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