Sunflowers brighten Delmar Boulevard
Don Koster and Richard Reilly, co-founders of the Sunflower + Project: StL, recently joined a number of other volunteers in planting around 10,000 sunflowers in a vacant lot along Delmar Boulevard. The volunteers hope that planting the flowers will be the first step in revitalizing the area.
Koster, who is an architect and lectures at Washington University, and Reilly, who is with the EarthWays Center of the Missouri Botanical Garden, founded Sunflower + Project to plant to summery flowers on urban lots that have already been developed, but may now be in disrepair. The pair hopes to encourage the eventual redevelopment of these parcels and, in the meantime, provide a temporary solution to the problem of the lots sitting vacant.
The sunflowers are an experiment in public art and public health, sustainability, and education, and it is hoped the flowers will make the neighborhood more attractive and improve the land’s usability in a low-cost, low-impact way. Sunflowers and winter wheat are planted alternately in order to enrich and clean urban soil in vacant lots.
This is the second year sunflowers have been planted in St. Louis. Last year, 1,800 of them were planted in the Old North section on Warren Street.
Project organizers could work with a banner printing company to create an item for display at the lot during the work, asking for volunteers.
Koster, who is an architect and lectures at Washington University, and Reilly, who is with the EarthWays Center of the Missouri Botanical Garden, founded Sunflower + Project to plant to summery flowers on urban lots that have already been developed, but may now be in disrepair. The pair hopes to encourage the eventual redevelopment of these parcels and, in the meantime, provide a temporary solution to the problem of the lots sitting vacant.
The sunflowers are an experiment in public art and public health, sustainability, and education, and it is hoped the flowers will make the neighborhood more attractive and improve the land’s usability in a low-cost, low-impact way. Sunflowers and winter wheat are planted alternately in order to enrich and clean urban soil in vacant lots.
This is the second year sunflowers have been planted in St. Louis. Last year, 1,800 of them were planted in the Old North section on Warren Street.
Project organizers could work with a banner printing company to create an item for display at the lot during the work, asking for volunteers.