Spread seeds around the globe

The term guerilla gardening comes from the 1970s. Citizens took derelict land in New York into their own hands and started to create gardens.

Richard Reynolds, a London practitioner who wrote the book "On Guerilla Gardening," is credited with coining what seems to be a widely accepted definition: the cultivation of someone else's land without permission.

Guerilla gardeners are springing up all over the globe, often under the cover of darkness, transforming abandoned lots and weedy wastelands into cultivated spaces. Some of these spots become de facto gardens, shrubbery lined and bulb embellished. Others are flowery, urban versions of meadows. Some are sprouting vegetables. Guerilla gardeners are pushing plants over pavement, not always legally.

It's a revolution better defined with a wink than a clenched fist, a movement whose goal seems to be making the world a brighter, greener place. The Molotov cocktail of this movement is the seed bomb, a cluster of seeds contained within a medium meant to be propelled over barbed wire or chain-link fences. Early seed bombs were Christmas ornaments or other containers packed with seeds and compost that could be chucked over a fence and would splatter and spread over the abandoned site.

Danny Phillips and Kim Karlsrud have put together a way to bring this green revolution to the masses.

"We were involved in the local L.A. guerilla gardener group," Phillips said, "digging up and planting abandoned spaces. I had a relative who retired from the vending-machine business, and he gave me these gumball machines. They sat around in the backyard for a while before we thought up the idea of scaling down seed bombs to fit the machines. We felt it was a way to expand a movement toward greening cities."

I encountered a seed-bomb machine outside the Little Flower Candy Shop in Pasadena, Calif. A man was feeding it quarters and twisting the knob to extract the clay-colored sphere, embedded with seeds. The bombs cost about 50 cents.

"We fill that machine about every six weeks," said Phillips when I spoke to him on the phone from Culver City, Calif., home to their design house, Commonstudio, where Greenaid, the seed bomb part of the business, is based. Phillips and Karlsrud, both 26, met at the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. He specializes in environmental design, and she does product design. Seed bombs made for a natural partnership.

Since the business started a little more than a year ago, they have set up 70 machines in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Mexico. They have plans for 10 machines in Greece. The machines are rented or sold to a local person. That person keeps them filled. Often, the proceeds are contributed to local causes. Within six months, the production became too large for the small team to handle. They partnered with Chrysalis, a nonprofit dedicated to "creating pathways for self-sufficiency for homeless and low-income individuals by providing the resources and support necessary to find and retain long-term employment."

Commonstudio provides training for Chrysalis clients to create the seed bombs. They create 2,000 to 5,000 seed bombs a week. Social enterprise, urban ecology and adaptive reuse are the tenets moving Commonstudio forward. Seed bombs are made out of clay, compost and seeds.

Different seed mixes are targeted toward the areas where the machines are located. For the Southeast, there is a wildflower mix that contains coeopsis, purple coneflower and butterfly milkweed among its 16 species. "We try to have a mix of perennials and annuals with a range of tolerances no matter what the situation they are coming into," said Phillips, with the idea being that some species are bound to succeed. "It's a self-contained, little nugget," Phillips said. "The plants sprout into an initial clump supported by the clay and compost. In the best situation, they will get some water to begin with."

The seed is also capable of lying dormant until the next rainy period arrives. Phillips said they are interested in species that are able to survive in adverse situations.

There are also seed bombs aimed at providing nectar plants for hummingbirds, bees and butterflies and an organic arugula mix. Commonstudio worked with botanists, horticulturists and nursery people to develop the lines of Greenaid seed bombs.

Greenaid also offers slingshots and packaged seed bombs on its website, greenaid.co.

Like any respectable, modern revolution, Commonstudio has developed an app that tracks the location of seed-bomb vending machines, allows users to mark the progress of bombed sites and unites the members of its community.