The Sunflower+Project: StL is remediating and making productive vacant, previously developed urban lots through the cultivation and planting of sunflowers and winter wheat. These hyper-accumulators have been shown to extract lead and other contaminants contained in previously developed urban soils. The Sunflower+Project: StL looks to demonstrate and study the viability, affordability, practicality and potential for employing this strategy at the urban scale through the use of a single urban lot. The team is using Lot 4 as a learning lab and test site for the implementation of this strategy. Over the course of two years we plan to cultivate, plant, and harvest 4 crop rotations in total – two of sunflowers and two of winter wheat- with the goal of maximizing and measuring the efficacy of the remediation efforts. While the test is being performed the project will serve as a neighborhood beautification tool. See their competition proposal board here.
Check out this great video featuring their project.
