Richard Reynolds' first illegal cultivation was at college, where he planted windowsills with boxes of Busy Lizzies. He became a guerrilla gardener in earnest in 2004 when he moved into a council block with dilapidated communal flowerbeds in London's Elephant & Castle. He is author of On Guerrilla Gardening.
For years I have been an illicit cultivator of neglected patches of public land. I ‘fight the filth with forks and flowers’ and until now had never been confronted with the choice between arrest and retreat.