Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Greentopia turns old shipping container into floral design space

Greentopia

A local floral workshop for city youths got a new home Monday morning,

A ribbon cutting was held for a new floral design space and shed in the JOSANA neighborhood for the local project Green Visions.

But it wasn’t outside a building, it’s outside a repurposed shipping container. The 800-square-foot space is on Whitney Street.

Michael Phillipson is the co-founder of Greentopia, which runs the project.

"There’s a small workshop where participants can put together the bouquets. There’s a tool shed that we can lock up to keep our garden tools and lawnmowers and things, and there’s a part of the shipping container that’s actually built as a cold storage room."

That cooling room will keep the flowers longer, in an effort to create more bouquets.

He says the shipping container is part of their mission to stay green.

"We're always looking into reuse and recycling, and of course, shipping containers have been used all over the world now for little kiosks and restaurants or retail outlets and so forth, so we thought why not use one as a shed/workshop on our program."

Green Visions is in its sixth year of operations working in and around the neighborhood to install and cultivate flower gardens on once-vacant and decaying lot. It employs about 15 students each summer.

Credit Greentopia

Flowers from the lots are harvested and arranged into bouquets, then sold at some area Wegmans as well as the public market.

Greentopia partnered with Canandaigua design company Ikoniq to design the container.

Philipson says it’s the first shipping container used in Rochester on a residential lot.