How can you give new life to an old unusable bike? The answer is simple – just turn it into a planter.
This trend has lasted for more than a decade now and its popularity is still on the rise. Round the world people have been decorating their gardens with vintage bikes that used to lay forgotten in the basement. All you need to do is remove the rust and paint it to protect the metal from further corrosion. The colors are usually very bright and people do not only paint the frame, keeping it the way it was when the bike was still in use, but they paint over the handles, seat, pedals, chain, even the wheels.
You can plant all kinds of flowers and they can be arranged on the bike in different ways. Usually it is a vintage bike with two pots, one in the front basket and another behind the seat on the rear wheel. Some people use only one pot or planter to show off their bike. Others line up pots on both sides of the frame. It is usually small flowers that people use, but there are also large ones which completely cover the bicycle after a while.
People use different bikes, older and newer models. Usually they pull out from the garage their old neglected bikes and if they don’t have any, they can always buy one at the flea market. Vintage bikes used to be very cheap but as the trend evolved it all turned into a lucrative business. The older and rarer a model is, the higher price it will have. For a classic vintage bike you will have to pay hundreds of dollars.
In our corner of the world, in Macedonia and Turkey, this is still an emerging trend and it is mainly done by enthusiasts who want to enrich their garden decor. In Greece, on the other hand, flower bikes are a huge urban trend. They can be seen in the streets of big cities, in cafés or homes, on beach boardwalks and even on the Cyclades where their bright colors are contrasted with the white houses.
Balkon3 team designed their first flower bike.
This old black Chinese model had been in the garage for nearly ten years and it was moved only when we needed to clean underneath. Scrap metal dealers offered small prices to buy it, but no money in the world can pay for the memories of travelling with it. The least it deserves is to decorate the garden. We decided to use red color and painted everything except the wheels. We left the original color because the bike is in good condition and may ride again. It is resting against a tree fixed with a few wires for stability. We spared no flowers to decorate it and since we could use only one side we put four long pots. And so this bike rides on, more in terms of time than space, but it got a second chance and a new life.
Goce Trpkovski
Comments
Loading ...
