The Vacant Lot of Cabbages, AKA The Cabbage Patch

Wellington, New Zealand. 1978

In 1978 a public protest took a turn to the bizarre when New Zealand contemporary artist Barry Thomas took to a vacant lot in central Wellington to protest the lack of park space in the central city.

The site on the corner of Willis and Manners Streets in Wellington had formerly been the site of The Roxy Cinema, which closed in 1974 then later demolished to make way for what is now the Duke's Arcade.

Having sat empty for two and a half years - Thomas and friends organised the protest took the form of an "urban garden" - in which Thomas and his friends cut through a wire fence, delivered a truck-load of top-soil and planted 180 cabbages on the site.