D.C.'s Guerrilla Gardener Gets His Revenge

Many D.C. commuters were saddened to learn in July that hundreds of flowers surreptitiously planted at an area Metro station would be removed by officials. But has the city's "Phantom Planter" had the last laugh?

1 minute read

October 29, 2013, 5:00 AM PDT

By Jonathan Nettler @nettsj

"Early this summer, guerrilla gardener Henry Docter surreptitiously planted 1,000 flowering plants in the long, tubelike entryway to the Dupont Circle Metro station. He did it, he said, to beautify the prominent but shabbily kept public space. Metro officials waited a couple of weeks before yanking out the hundreds of morning glories and other plants in July, prompting more than 10,000 supporters to sign a “Let Our Flowers Grow” petition."

Seeking "artistic closure", Docter and a "young collaborator" suspended "a 6-by-6-by-4-foot boxlike artwork, which was covered with quotes about the July flower standoff" above the Q Street entrance of the Dupont Circle Metro station on Sunday. Docter's act of closure "wound up being a merger of performance art, civil disobedience and fodder for a bunch of strangers to have an impromptu Sunday chat about government power and the need for unexpected beauty," reports Michelle Boorstein.

FULL STORY: Metro pulled out his flowers, but guerrilla gardener pops back up in Dupont Circle

Sunday, October 27, 2013 in The Washington Post

Landscape Architecture District of Columbia Guerrilla Gardening Metro Dupont Circle Henry Docter View More

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