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This article looks at the institutionalisation of informal street gardening practices through municipal greening permit schemes introduced since the early 2000s. It is based on a study of the schemes developed by twenty French municipalities and analyses the mechanisms for standardising and developing street gardening practices as an element of alternative urban policies. Drawing upon the concept of tactics, the aim is to show that the institutional takeover of street gardening depends on maintaining the precarious and temporary nature of this practice, while contributing to its standardisation, normalisation and aestheticisation. The institutionalisation of street gardening does not contribute to a renewal in the management of living vegetation in the city and reinforces the anomalous and marginal nature of this use of the street.