Yards

When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken.” -Che Guevara
When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken.” -Che Guevara

What Is a Yard?

The yard, guerrilla yardwork’s primary theater of operations, is a plot of land enclosed by a fence or other boundary, directly adjacent to a residential structure, i.e. a house. Though the word itself has the same root as ‘garden,’ the American garden is typically a subset of the yard in that it is an area that contains one or more plots where vegetables, herbs, flowers, or ornamental plants are grown; other yard subsets may include a lawn, a play area, and a patio.

How Many Yards Are Available for Guerrilla Yardwork?

Based on the number of yardwork guerrillas, two simple calculations show that in 2011 there were 925,000 yards in the United States ripe for guerrilla yardwork, totaling some 7.4 billion square feet (205,500 acres or 265 square miles) of land. Every year a new batch of yards grows the pool, so if average duration of each yard revolution (6 years) is multiplied by the yard area total, more than 44 billion square feet (1.2 million acres or almost 1,600 square miles) of yard area can be revolutionized at any moment. This represents approximately 1.5% of developed land in the United States of America. The yardvolution is not only widely distributed, it covers a lot of Earth.

How to Recognize a Yardvolutionized Yard?

Yards transformed by guerrilla yardwork manifest several commonalities:

  • Natural appearance
  • Unfinished look
  • Relaxed feel

* Excerpted from Guerrilla Yardwork: The First-Time Home Owner’s Handbook. Buy now on Amazon.