Rebellious Seed Planters
Have you ever walked past a bleak patch of urban nothingness and felt an itch to splash it with life? What if you didn’t just walk on by? What if, like a joyful rebel with a trowel, you turned that forgotten space into a tiny Eden?
That’s what Ellen Miles is doing in London. She is a rebellious seed planter, and whether she knows it or not, she is echoing the ways of a radical rabbi who once scattered seeds of hope across dry and hardened ground.
In 2020, Miles launched Nature Is a Human Right, a campaign to make daily access to green space a global standard in a time when the majority of the world's population lives in cities with limited access to nature. But bureaucracy moves at a glacial pace, so Miles took matters into her own hands, literally: She became a guerrilla gardener.
Picture grassroots planting in public spaces, no permission slip required. “It’s like graffiti,” Miles says, “but with wildflowers.” When green space in London was suddenly off-limits during the COVID lockdowns, Miles and her neighbors gathered early Sunday mornings with bulbs and trowels in hand, like a covert garden crew. They didn’t wait for someone else to fix it. They just planted, filling sidewalk cracks, empty lots, and scraggly curbs with beauty. Not to vandalize, but to heal.
Was it legal? Not exactly. But as long as they weren’t causing harm, most authorities turned a blind eye. As London's Royal Horticultural Society advises, it's all right to "plant in ways that respect space, access, and safety." Rebellious, yes. Reckless, no.
This kind of green rebellion has roots (pun intended) going back decades. From Liz Christy’s “Green Guerrillas” in 1970s New York, to Ron Finley’s gangsta gardening in Los Angeles, to French activists and South African collectives, people across the globe have been quietly transforming barren zones into places teeming with life.
Miles even shares tips on TikTok now: how to make “seed bombs,” create moss graffiti, and grow beauty in the cracks. “I wasn’t a gardener,” she said. “I just wanted greener streets.” Guerrilla gardening is “something you can do with your own two hands," she said. "You see the change immediately. It’s empowering.”
Ellen Miles may be planting daisies, but the deeper truth? She’s sowing hope, beauty, and life in places the world has forgotten. Just as Jesus did.
Jesus was the ultimate seed planter, dropping truth and grace into hardened hearts, and reviving joy in barren places. He worked outside the expected systems and looked for the lonely corners, the dry places, the overlooked people. And He planted life.
What would it mean for Cedar Creek to embrace this joy-filled spirit -- to spot the vacant lots in our neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and church, and fill them with something life-giving? Where is God calling us to be rebellious seed planters?