Gardening doesn't have to be boring. This Sunday (August 13), Jane Fukumura and Keely O’Brien are offering a creative, community-orientated alternative to just digging a hole in the ground and planting a seed.

The event is called Scatter, running from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in East Vancouver's Pandora Park, partnered with the Vines Art Festival. The artists are inviting community members of all ages to come out and help create hundreds of seed bombs that will eventually be planted across the city.

“We want to green our neighbourhoods in fun, creative ways,” Fukumura tells the Straight over the phone.

Seed bombs fall under the umbrella of “guerilla gardening.” Seeds are encased in dirt and newspaper, decorated, and placed anywhere with a patch of soil.

“The idea is you can toss it anywhere and it’ll grow,” Fukumura says. She and O’Brien tested a few seed bombs ahead of the event, and happily report that they worked: tips of green started emerging a week later.

Scatter will be using calendulas and crimson clover as the basis of the seed bombs. Both were selected as noninvasive plants that are helpful to pollinators.

Sunday’s event will include live music and everyone is invited to drop in and contribute to the process. The more theatrical portion of Scatter is set to take place the following Sunday, when a mosaic of the word scatter will be set up in the park.

“The idea is that people will come across it, take them home, and the word scatter will eventually scatter,” Fukumura says.

Fukumura and O’Brien cofounded their own theatre company, Popcorn Galaxies. They’ve put on original pieces around the city, from performance to installation to puppet shows, and Fukumura says that Scatter falls under the company’s mandate to “re-enchant the everyday world”.  

“I really like the idea of seeds and dirt and encourage people to start gardening in creative ways,” Fukumura says. “It’s fun to get people excited about green urban activities.”

More information about Scatter can be found here.