Seed bombs have long been a (non-violent) weapon of choice for guerrilla gardeners, but Flower Shells now aim to make your 12-gauge shotgun a key part of your go-green arsenal. Perhaps these will redefine ‘flower power’ for a new generation of eco-warriors, though a bad misfire might instead give new meaning to ‘pushing up daisies’.
“A personal project between art, gardening and gun smoke,” these are what they sound like: modified shotgun shells filled with seeds, all designed to make gardening more fun.
Their inventor, after “hour and hours of weeding, seeding and cutting” was working one planting meadow flower when the realization dawned: “this could be made much easier, faster, better using a shotgun. Said and done, soon I had emptied a shotgun shell of led and filled it with flower seeds.”
Encountered skepticism was turned into motivation: “I tested different seeds, different ways of closing the shell after modification, different amount of gunpowder, different angels of firing and different guns.”
A modern take on beating swords into plowshares, the project adapts devices designed to kill into ones that give life instead. “Walking through a field of meadow flowers, cornflowers, daisies and poppies an early summer sunday morning made me realize this was working. This flourishing field was my creation, it was all done with 142 shotgun shells.”
