(Seed)bombs away!

The Greenaid project hopes to turn L.A.'s grey areas green with old quarter candy machines repurposed into 'seedbomb' dispensaries.

Tue, Apr 27 2010 at 10:59 AM

Last month in a ‘Playing catch up’ post, I linked to a Fast Company article profiling Kim Karlsrud and Daniel Phillips, the brains behind L.A.'s Greenaid. This nifty urban guerilla gardening project involves the duo retrofitting old quarter candy machines inherited by Karlsrud into homemade seedbomb — little balls of red clay, compost, and seeds — dispensaries. The goal? To help spruce up in-need-of-green communities around L.A. with indigenous plants. Here's a few words about the project from Karlsrud and Phillips themselves:

Made from a mixture of clay, compost, and seeds, 'seedbombs' are becoming an increasingly popular means of combating the many forgotten grey spaces we encounter everyday — from sidewalk cracks to vacant lots and parking medians. They can be thrown anonymously into these derelict urban sites to temporarily reclaim and transform them into places worth looking at and caring for. The Greenaid dispensary simply makes these guerilla gardening efforts more accessible to all by appropriating the existing distribution system of the quarter operated candy machine.

Since the Fast Company profile, Greenaid has generated a decent amount of buzz. An L.A. news channel even recently caught up with Karlsrud and Phillips to chat about their urban greening venture. I absolutely love the idea behind Greenaid and hope that the vision of installing more than one Seedbomb vending machine (the current one is in L.A.'s Chinatown) becomes a reality. Seedbomb machines would definitely get a lot of action at the bodegas in my "residustrial" Brooklyn neighborhood.

Want to make your own seedbombs to toss around your neighborhood (or just in your backyard)? Check out the second video for expert advice on how to do so from the Guerilla Gardener, Richard Reynolds.

Via [TreeHugger]

Also on MNN: Celebrate International Sunflower Guerilla Gardening Day

Images: CommonStudio

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Comments: 3

Koala Apr 29 2010 at 11:24 PM

Enter your comments here Wonder if the Seed Bomb creators have the foresight of distributing seeds that are native to the different parts of the country. Wonder if they cautioned not to bomb the cracks in the existing concrete slabs of, for instance, parking lots. The repairs of some urban structures would reverse ANY good intentions infused in the seed project.