Juniors Jess Stewart (left) and Elaine Gu take photos of a possible location for their sneak garden. (Click to create a slideshow)

With teacher Hadley Hauser in the background, sophomores Vivian Robison (center) and Katie Buzard choose which kinds of flowers they want to plant in their sneak garden. (Click to create a slideshow)

Andrew Weiss takes a photo as class members prepare seeds for their gardens. (Click to create a slideshow)

JUNIOR YEAR IS a wonderful year for many reasons. But one of the best things is that you get priority over three-fifths of the school when it comes to choosing Agora Days classes.

This year I decided to take full advantage of the prioritizing and chose to be in multiple movie, craft, and cooking classes.

The outcome? When I got my final schedule, I had $20 worth of fees to pay for a total of six classes! I was astounded. There went my spending money.

One class that didn't require a fee, though, was Bring on the Sneak Gardens!, taught by sophomore Hadley Hauser and Andrew Weiss, a visiting lecturer on the design faculty at the University of Illinois School of Architecture.

I was extremely thankful for the fact that I didn't have to spend anymore money, but looking at the description (which talked about wandering around Uni and planting gardens), I wondered if I would actually find sufficient interest in the activities.

Day 1 we met up in Room 312, which had only one giant table for the students to gather around. It turned out that the class was actually fairly popular and consisted of students from sophomores on up.

Weiss introduced himself, and I immediately knew I would like his personality. He had recently completed his thesis, “Gardening in Vague Terrain.” The first day we spent discussing what really made up a “sneak garden” and the ones that Weiss, himself, had constructed.

So what is a sneak garden?

A “sneak garden” is one that is built on land that doesn’t necessarily belong to the gardener. The gardener typically will see land that he thinks isn’t being put to good use and will gather the tools and time to start a garden there. Sometimes this process is also referred to as “guerrilla gardening.”

“While Andrew's focus lies in the boundaries of what you can and cannot do on someone else's property, I'm drawn to the notion of turning something that is awful into something that is incredible,” Hauser said in her description of the course.

Weiss showed us pictures of the gardens he had made throughout Champaign-Urbana, primarily focusing on downtown or campus areas.

We heard the stories about how he woke up at 4:30 in the morning so as not to get in the way of any pedestrians, and how he had to turn the soil and water and tend to the plants regularly.

Sometimes we heard how, despite his kind and selfless efforts, people would step on the plants or run over the flowerbeds with their cars. It seemed so disappointing, and we hadn’t even planted them ourselves!

So on Day 2, despite the frigid cold weather, we named formed ourselves into small groups, named our groups, and trudged through the snow to spot out future potential “sneak garden” areas on campus.

The search begins

The group that I was in, which included juniors Elaine Gu, Maddy Levin, and Jess Stewart, immediately started down Goodwin Avenue on a hunt for a small plot of unused land. We had been supplied with a disposable bright-pink camera from Hauser and Weiss to take pictures and document our efforts.

We were able to find many places we thought needed sprucing up (Elaine even declared that we should garden a cement median in the road), but we noted that many places were often trampled by cold college students or had too much shading from buildings.

After we made our way down past the Krannert Center we had to stop for a coffee break (with permission) to warm our frozen hands and to discuss the difficulties of sneak gardening, and then we quickly made our way back to class.

By Day 3, all the pictures we had taken were developed! The teachers were on top of things and had even taken what they thought were the best photos from each group and pasted them onto a poster board.

Unfortunately when the bell rang to begin the class we realized that we were locked out of Room 312 and had no key to get in. We waited out on benches in front of the door until, thankfully, a teacher was kind enough to open it for us. To our dismay, since no one had been using the room, it was completely freezing, but thanks to Jess we were able to turn the heat up and begin our discussion.

The group I was in had named itself “Sneak R’ Us,” while other groups had names like “Dig It” and other gardening-related titles. Hauser directed us to go through our photos and decide which locations would be the most reasonable for planting a sneak garden.

My group members and I spent time discussing this among ourselves, then we presented our possible location to all the other groups, who gave us their input.

After getting approval from the other groups, we started to cut out pictures of flowers we wanted in our sneak garden, and we read captions to see if the flowers we were choosing would thrive in the location we’d picked. It was a laid-back day, and as we cut out flowers everyone started to talk among themselves.

Looking forward to spring planting season

On the final day our teachers showed up with poster boards, one for each group. Hauser and Weiss had taken pictures of the locations each group had decided to plant their sneak garden in, and they had blown up the photos to fit the boards.

The pictures of the locations were in black and white and looked rather dull. To brighten up our future sneak gardens, the teachers gave us folders containing the flower cutouts we'd found the previous day, and we spent the period gluing the cutouts to the boards. It was another laid-back day, and as we went about strategically placing the flowers onto our pictures, everyone was able to just talk and relax and watch our gardens come to life.

At the same time the teachers prepared containers of soil, and we got our hands dirty planting different seeds. We labeled the seeds using popsicle sticks, then we covered the containers and brought them to the biology lab for storing.

It was one of the only Agora classes I have had thus far in my Uni career where my teachers actually planned to keep in touch with their students. Weiss and Hauser told us the plants would be stored in the biology lab until they had fully grown and until the weather was nice enough for us to plant them in our sneak gardens; they said they would keep in touch with us, and when it was time we would all go create our gardens.

We wrapped up the day talking about the success of the class and how much we liked it. Really, I would recommend Bring on the Sneak Gardens! to students next year. It’s a course in which you get to be active (but not sweaty), and at the same time you get to learn about something new and socialize with friends.

I hope that Hauser and Weiss will re-teach the class next year, and I would suggest everyone take a look around campus for the work of Weiss (and other guerrilla gardeners) — and hopefully people will begin to appreciate these efforts a little more.

Bring on the Sneak Gardens!

NOTE: Click any photo to start your own slideshow — then keep clicking.

Andrew Weiss of the U of I School of Architecture discusses some of the qualities of a sneak garden; his co-teacher, sophomore Hadley Hauser, is at his right. All photos by Lizzy Warner (click to enlarge)

Co-teacher Hadley Hauser helps fellow sophomores Vivian Robison and Katie Buzard with their sneak-garden planning.

Junior Elaine Gu cuts out pictures of flowers to prepare her group's sneak garden project.

Seniors Emily Chu (foreground) and Jie Han and other group members work together to decorate their future sneak garden.

Junior Jess Stewart (standing at right) helps to prepare some of the seeds that will be used once the weather is nicer.

Some of the posters documenting student efforts were displayed in the classroom.