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Seedballing Makes NPR!

We were just on NPR for our Guerilla Gardening project. We had a fun Sunday walking around with Margot Adler and dropping seedballs in some underloved spaces.

Neighborhood organizations across the U.S. that want to improve the environment are using a surprising weapon: seed balls. It's a technique for planting in abandoned places and often inhospitable land that was developed in Japan by Masanobu Fukuoka, a pioneer in "natural farming."

The technique has worked its way to Brooklyn, N.Y. In the Greenpoint neighborhood on a recent Sunday afternoon, a small group of activists walked the streets carrying paper bags filed with little balls made from clay, compost and seeds. They are members of a local group called NAG, or Neighbors Allied for Good Growth. They drop the balls on dirt piles and throw them into abandoned lots...

Gallagher says that seed balls allow people to take control of their small piece of the planet. She says walking around on a Sunday morning throwing seed balls is fun and easy.

"I think it is really important to break down these larger tasks — of taking back our neighborhoods and cleaning up our open spaces — into tasks that are completely doable," she says.

Check out the story, audio available online at 7pm

Seedballs!

On Saturday, March 21st members of NAG's Open Space organizing group gathered in East River State Park, across from the NAG office, to learn about the urban gardening strategy of "seed balls."  The group, together with some enthusiastic passersby, made hundreds of clay pellets filled with wildflower seeds and organic compost material provided by Crest Hardware.  We're going to distribute the seedballs to neighbors in Williamsburg and Greenpoint to plant in vacant plots of land on March 28th.

To participate in the distribution, contact us at openspace@nag-brooklyn.org

Pictures by Jeremy Levine and Marina Fernandez Ferri