Artist Breathes New Life into Decrepit Detroit House With Flowers

Detroit is going through a lot of changes right now as people attempt to clean up the city and save it from the bankruptcy it faced two years ago. One of the most interesting changes? A house covered in flowers.

Floral designer Lisa Waud launched the project after spending $500 on the abandoned house. As the owner of Pot and Box, she's worked on a wide variety of floral arrangements, but covering an abandoned house from floor to ceiling in flowers is a pretty hefty project. Working with other designers, Waud plans for the Flower House to officially open for a weekend in October, and a preview in a neighboring house this May gave a feel for what the public can expect.

They covered the house in flowers, succulents, vines, and more in order to create an immersive art piece. According to Designboom, the preview event alone required over 4000 stems and flowers. "We made our list to feature sturdy flowers and foliage that would stand up in chicken wire and other hardware structures we constructed," Waud said. With the help of her team, she even gathered flowers on the median of a busy highway, cut trees from the foundation of the house, and found wildflowers from the area around the house. And that was just the test run. The October event is expected to be 15 times bigger.

Waud says many of the neighborhood's residents have taken interest. "Everyone who walks by stops to ask what we’re doing, to hear about the flower house project and long-term plans to bring the structures down and make way for a flower farm, and to share what they remember about the houses’ past occupants," she said. After the Flower House's showing from October 16 to 18, the house will be "responsibly deconstructed" and the land will be converted to a flower farm and design center. If you want to help the house have one last hurrah in floral form, you can donate to the project on their website.

All photos via Heather Saunders for Flower House.

[h/t: DesignBoom]