Sprouting up alongside the streets of New York City, garbage cans packed with colorful flowers are turning repelled waste receptacles into attractive centers of attention for garbage-weary pedestrians.
Floral designer Lewis Miller has been turning heads — passersby are quite literally stopping to smell the roses (and other plants) appearing in his carefully arranged bouquets, each unique and site-specific.
His ongoing project takes empty bins and uses them as blank canvasses, creating botanical art through sunflowers, azaleas, and other more exotic species. Something about the juxtaposition with beat-up wire-mesh containers makes them all the more stunning, too.
“We are storytellers through the art of floral design, transforming an arrangement into a love song and an event into an indelible experience,” says the artist. Different arrangements also pick up patterns and colors from their context, be it stickers, signs, architecture or other street art.
The temporary installations may not be a permanent solution for bad-smelling trash in a city well known for its street-side waste, but at least they offer a colorful (if passing) reprieve from the normal contents of these containers.
