recycling with rik

Oil: $60.00 a barrel. Gas: Creeping toward $3.00 a gallon. What’s a poor Hummer to do?

The rising costs of operation and the compromised resale value don’t mean your super-sized SUV is a dinosaur just quite yet. And even if, eventually, that time does come, you still don’t have to give up your 37 12.5x17 tires and 17” wheels.

Take heart. A summer-long exhibit at Jardin Botanique de Montreal (the Montreal Botanical Garden) shows how a cherished family vehicle can be transformed into an attractive garden sculpture and floral showcase. All you need is a little creativity and some simple retrofitting.

The Jardin Botanique appropriately chose a Volkswagen “Bug” for their project.

“In the late 1960’s, ‘Flower Power’ was a slogan that nourished our imagination and spirits,” their brochure claims. This, then, was the inspiration that moved the Jardin Botanique’s resident artist and staff gardeners to reconceive the VW Bug – blanketed in ficus, splashed with impatiens. Beautiful, man. Groovy.

So if you’d like to follow the Jardin Botanique down the road to Flower Power, here’s how to begin:

First, your vehicle-of-choice needs to be stripped down. Empty the engine compartment. Remove the fuel tank. Pull the wiring. Take out the seats. That’s all deadweight.

Next, move your vehicle to its new parking space and put it up on blocks. Suspending the tires a few inches above ground allows a ground cover room to grown under and around the tires so they appear to be touching down. But, importantly, the weight of the vehicle resting on the axles, or frame, will prolong the life of the tires.

With the vehicle suitably sited, you’re ready to affix a chicken-wire mesh over everything but the windows, bumpers, headlights, taillights and chrome. If you have a pneumatic stapler, the wire mesh can be stapled in place. Otherwise, drill holes and use chain-link fence ties to secure the chicken wire. Leave some “play” in the chicken wire – about 2-inches to 3-inches when pulled away from the vehicle.

At this stage, decide where you want your flowers and provide each location with a receptacle. The Jardin Botanique VW has holes cut in it where the impatiens’ small plastic containers rest at an angle and are mostly hidden.

If you choose this method, find a tin can your flower container slides into snugly. Using the can as a size-guide cut a hole in the vehicle body with a reciprocating saw. (Of course, you can also use a cutting torch, if you have one. Or, drill a series of holes around the circumference of the circle and punch it out.) Make a series of cuts 1-inch deep around the top of the can; splay this portion; insert the can in its hole; pop rivet or wire the can in place. The receptacle is ready.

Alternatively, you can simply pre-position sturdy wires where you want flowerpots to hang.

Determine now if you’ll hand-water or use automatic watering. If automating, behind the chicken wire, install a drip-line system to each of the flowerpot receptacles. On the roof, install a pop-up head system that will mist over the sides. Depending on the vehicle, install directional heads to water the hood and trunk areas.

Although the Jardin Botanique used ficus on its vehicle, it’s recommended for the Spokane area climate to use the hardier English ivy. To give the ivy a toehold on the vehicle stuff sphagnum (peat moss) between the chicken wire and vehicle body. Sphagnum is available at local nurseries.

Insert plugs of ivy into the sphagnum every 6 inches to 8 inches and pack them in place with moistened potting soil.

Now, hang your flower containers and, voila! finis.

Congratulations on your do-it-yourself aesthetic success.

There is, however, considerable utilitarian value your work of art still provides. For instance, you may find it useful in early spring as a cold-frame. It may become your new storage shed. You may adapt it into your own private meditation space, or wine-tasting room.

Whatever. You’ve done something good for the planet. Reused a valuable resource. But if you get a little itch of nostalgia for “what once was,” you can have your cake and eat it, too. Just hitch your glorious ivy-and-flower-festooned old Hummer to a brace of Clydesdales and get a little road time in the Lilac Festival Armed Forces Torchlight Parade. Cheers!