Over the past four months since we started fostering Chloe, I’ve been noticing the damage to lawns caused by crows and other critters going after the grubs of the European Chafer Beetle when I take her out for a walk.
A video from City Farmer explains the problem:
Last week I decided to do something about it. I created a flyer that I am distributing only to houses that have lawn damage clearly attributable to the Chafer Beetle. It isn’t hard to figure out.
Flyer: [Click for full version]

We don’t need more lawns. Ideally, as the City Farmer says above, we need more vegetable gardens in our front yards like this one,
but if you are going have a lawn, use a grass seed that doesn’t require much mowing or watering. The product above meets that criteria.
So far, I’ve walked between Cambie and Main from 16th to 19th and plan to go all the way up to 24th. Then I’ll do the same route between Cambie and Oak. It takes me about an hour at a leisurely pace and Chloe loves it too.
100 flyers: $5.55
Exercise and improving the world: Priceless
-30-
This sure looks like a sunflower to me….

This event went so well.

Read about it here* and see more pictures here
The next step is to plant them. April 1st seem like a great day for that.
-30-
*08April07 – Meetup.com changed their message format from online writing/storage to email only. What they didn’t tell us is that they would be deleting all existing messages. Grrr!
16March07 – More about seed balls from workshop participant Andrea Bellamy here and here
Technorati Tags: guerrillagardening, guerrilla, gardening, vancouver, bc, urban, landscaping, public, spaces
All the construction near Cambie St resulted in a lot of side streets being dug up, so in a move to restore the ground, earth was put down and grass seed was spread.

What an opportunity to add to the diversity.

I took seeds of white dutch clover and
crimson clover

and spread them thickly over the area.

Want to do some guerrilla gardening yourself but need the strength of numbers?
The Vancouver Guerrilla Gardening Meetup Group has links to GG info in other parts of the world.
ooo
Technorati Tags: guerrilla gardening, guerrilla, gardening, white dutch clover, crimson clover, clover, vancouver, bc
Sign up on Meetup.com website….
Seed ball making workshop – The Vancouver Guerilla Gardening Meetup Group (Vancouver, BC) – Meetup.com
When: Saturday, March 10, 2007, 1:00 PM
Where: Mount Pleasant Community Center
3161 Ontario Street
Vancouver , BC V5T 2Z1
Description:
We will be supplying
Seed – Crimson clover, White dutch clover, grass seeds, wild flowers
bring your own seeds to add to the mix – California poppy welcome
Red Clay
Compost
Mixing bowls
You will need to bring
a container for taking your seed balls home – something like a small pizza box so that the seed balls won’t be stacked too high on top of each other, they will be fragile.
At the end of the day…
You will be able to take 1/3 of the seed balls home for your own use and experimentation
The other 2/3 will be used to populate a guerrilla garden site at 7th and Hemlock
A planting day will be arranged within three weeks of the workshop date.
There is a $5.00 fee for this event.
ooo
Technorati Tags: guerrilla gardening, vancouver, seed balls, urban landscaping, gardening, changeeverything.ca
Links to all people mentioned on original page:
Inspiration overload
As I mentioned last week, a guerrilla gardening group recently formed in Vancouver. We met last weekend, and I’ve been thinking about how to introduce the group to Heavy Petal readers. You see, there are just so many cool people involved! It’s inspiring and exciting.
First, there’s our founder and fearless leader, Oren, a landscape architect with a focus on urban ecological design.
There’s Al, who some of you might know from his blog Urban Wilderness but who is now blogging from Al’s Bokashi Blog about Bokashi composting (Al, I must find out more about this!).
There’s Ward, the “boy” behind cityfarmboy.com, a company promoting urban farming and related products and services.
Read it all…