No pothole too deep for the Guerrilla Gardener

His work is unlikely to feature on any Olympics tourist guide to London, yet Australian-born artist Steve Wheen offers an eccentric alternative to the usual city sites, turning every pothole he encounters into a miniature oasis.

Every chance he gets, he fills in potholes in London’s East End with dramatic mini-gardens.

Known locally as the Guerrilla Gardener, he creates these scenes on neglected streets, laneways and footpaths, filling the potholes and footpath cracks with a combination of plants and delightful miniature props, including picnic blankets, deck-chairs, telephone boxes, golf clubs and a cricket bat. He even planted a celebratory Royal Wedding garden last April.

Like the satirical street artist, Bansky, he has attracted a huge following because Wheen isn’t doing it just for laughs. There is a political dimension to his desire to spread “little moments of happiness. .He uses his subversive gardens to alert city officials to the danger posed to cyclists when they ride over the potholes.

Wheen, 33, from Canberra, started pothole gardening as a school project. He has continued his passion, living for the past eight years in a tiny flat without a garden in East London. He describes his work as “part art project, part labour of love, part experiment, part mission to highlight how shit our roads are — the pictures and gardens are supposed to put smiles on people’s faces and alert them to potholes”.

What he has just discovered is that, on this side of the pond, there are even bigger potholes than those found in London. Cork is probably the Pothole Capital of Ireland and, as luck would have it, there is a garden-in-waiting in the city that could do with being placed in a pothole.

Diarmuid Gavin’s hanging garden — which won gold at the Chelsea Flower Show last May — is destined to become an attraction at Fitzgerald’s Park. Having already spent a pothole-sized fortune on the project, Cork City Council plans to spend a further €1.7 million revamping the park to create a Sky Garden.

“I think it’s a great idea,” says Wheen. “I have been to Ireland the past couple of years, to Cork and Galway and would love to do it there.”

When he learned of Cork City Council’s spendthrift ways, he was aghast: “€1.7m? Just think how many potholes they could have filled in with that!”

Filling the city’s manifold potholes — many within a bumpy ride of the park — would solve two problems at once and, considering Mr Wheen’s charming work, he will probably prove a more agreeable partner than the fractious Mr Gavin.

A Sky Garden in a pothole? Maybe Cork City Council could start looking into it.