Ghost Blooms: The Detroit Foraged Flower Project

Our Detroit neighborhood, Pingree Park, sat alongside a neighborhood that had been all but emptied out. The city was actively working on demolishing houses and we saw many long-abandoned homes torn down over the years we lived there, leaving us with fields of grass and weeds.

Every spring, the ghosts of gardens past would arrive on these empty lots reminding us of all of the life lived in the now-abandoned neighborhood. Century-old peony plants sat laden with flowers in the middle of waist high weeds, tulips would outline where sidewalks and front porches used to sit, hyacinths blossomed in scattered patches. I would walk empty lots with a pair of clippers, picking the hidden flowers for improvised arrangements at home. I’d prune the roses straggling against forgotten fence posts and push fertilizing spikes into their roots hoping that we’d have our July roses, too.

Beauty finds a way.