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Maybe by now you’ve read about Deborah Fisher, a Brooklyn artist who decided to plant wildflowers all over her urban neighborhood this year. A friend sent me a blog mentioning her project. What could have stayed only a minor idea (lady wants everyone to throw some wildflower seeds around abandoned properties) took off. The magic combination of summer, seeds, and beautification project seems to have been just enough to bring out the volunteers: They could envision it, they could do it, they showed up. It sounded like everybody felt like changing the world a little bit, and starting on the block would do for April. 
Photo by Kate Glicksberg The New York Times quoted Fisher: "I want there to be so many wildflowers on the streets that the summer of 2009 is remembered very fondly by every single resident of the neighborhood. I want the continuity of the Meadow to be so strong that Google Earth is compelled to rephotograph Bed-Stuy." By now, the Times and blogs have covered the project, intrigued probably because someone and her neighbors organized an effort to improve their community environment with so little fuss. Of course, readers must also have found the story compelling because of the picture you get in your head when you think of wildflowers springing up in the last soil available in New York. Fisher and her neighbors will still wake up in Brooklyn, with its buildings, streets, and sidewalks, so it isn’t like the wildflowers will draw deer and hummingbirds, but that doesn’t mean people who have had more opportunity all along don’t have something to learn from her. No need to let Fisher’s planting stop in Brooklyn. There must be other "quick and dirty" ways to appeal to a community to help improve the wildlife in your area. Her Johnny Appleseed approach makes a great model; now to apply it to positive actions for wildlife. What upbeat, wildflower-planting actions would help lower global warming, improve a habitat in your area, or diminish poaching somewhere? Just so you know, the Times also quoted an onlooker at Fisher’s party who didn’t like the idea; he claimed he wouldn’t come "move furniture" around in her house, and that she was doing the equivalent of that by planting wildflowers. Expect an unhappy person in any crowd.
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