Guerrilla Gardening Gets Major Press For Music Festival

Just how do you promote an environmentally-focused music festival in Budapest on a shoestring budget? You create gardens overnight and plant 800 flowers in unused and run down public areas, of course. That's exactly what Budapest agency RayGun did for the Hegyalja music festival and Hungary's participation in the celebration of World Day of Environment Protection. The agency trecked to four Hungarian cities; Budapest, Miskolc, Debrecen and Nyireghaza to create the gardens and plant the flowers mostly near bridges and overpasses.

The effort, at not much more than the cost of the flowers, garnered major news coverage on television news programming and within major national newspapers. While it's difficult to argue against the planting of flowers, the Budapest Council did threaten legal action against the agency but Creative Director Alex Poulson tells us the agency is now working with the governing body to discuss further means of beautifying the city.

View additional images of the plantings here.