About

who is the greenjacker?

The Greenjacker is everywhere. She’s the woman who sat next to you on the bus this morning and the man who smiled knowingly at you as he walked on by; she’s the green fingered guerrilla gardener who works to the sound of the dawn chorus and the roofer who makes bee-friendly hideaways high above the town centre streets; he’s the dog walker with a pooper-scooper in one hand and a spade in the other and the schoolgirl with the muddiest shoes and the brightest smile; they all have seeds in their pockets and mud on their minds!

The greenjacker isn’t going to wait for the politicians, big business and the ‘professionals’ to get off their bums and finally make a difference; they’re going to grow a greener, better, healthier, friendlier world – right here, right now – one plot at a time!

The Greenjacker does not believe in wasteland; just wasted opportunity. The meaning of life is to LIVE, so to give your life meaning GIVE LIFE. Go forth and cultivate;with the first seed you plant you become the Greenjacker.

Greenjackers seek and employ practical, green, grass-root, DIY solutions to England’s social, economic and environmental problems. We’re guerrilla gardeners committed to changing hearts and minds by actively changing the landscape where we live. We fill neglected patches of land with edible, useful and/or wildlife-friendly plants… and sometimes we add edible, useful and/or wildlife-friendly plants to places where they really should have been planted in the first place – such as pedestrian areas or public squares where they ‘forgot’ to put such plants – which is why we tend to do things by stealth. Another strategy Greenjackers often employ is ‘Pre-Planting’, whereby we ‘prepare’ an area with area non-intrusive native fruits and other useful plants and fungi so that future generations might have access to vital resources. Luckily you don’t have to be a national institution, a government body or a major landowner to transform yourlocal area. With a little imagination and knowhow the vast majority of neglected sites in the UK, no matter how industrial or barren they may first appear, can be transformed into a resource for humans and wildlife alike. From road-side verges to supermarket car-parks, the possibilities are endless.

 

what does it all mean?

Green

1. of, relating to, or advocating ecological awareness, the preservation of natural resources, etc.
2. designating or of a political party or movement having these goals

Jack

1. Jack – Jack-In-The-Green; a traditional participant in the English May Day celebrations thought to represent the ‘Green Man’, the mysterious Green Man is depicted in mediaeval church carvings and is widely felt to be an embodiment of natural fertility, a spirit of the primeval greenwood and a trickster; by extension he is linked to such mythological characters as Puck, Robin Goodfellow, Robin Hood, the Green Knight and others.
2. jack – to hunt by night with aid of a jack light.

greenjacker
-noun
A person who greenjacks.

greenjacking
-verb
The art of taking an object, building, concept or a piece of land and turning it into something brighter, greener, more useful and/or more beautiful.

[Origin: 2008, ‘Night of the Greenjacker’ by Warren Draper, a  freegan guerrilla gardener]