Some enterprising folks have made novel re-use of one of those much-maligned trailers that the federal government commissioned at great expense to house Gulf coast residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

Students and faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology took a "FEMA trailer" and converted it into a community garden on wheels. Their creation is dubbed "The Armadillo" because of the accordion-style, retractable cover over the composting center and greenhouse built on the end of the trailer. 

The trailer stopped in Baltimore over the weekend. It's now in the possession of Side Street Projects, an artist-run nonprofit group based in Pasadena, California. Jon Lapointe, acting executive director and Emily Hopkins, program director, are taking the trailer 6,500 miles back across the United States to its new hometown, where it'll join the group's fleet of mobile workshops.

The duo parked the white trailer yesterday in a pocket park on Madeira Street in East Baltimore and did a hands-on workshop with kids, making flower and plant pots out of plastic soda bottles. They had one patch of the trailer festooned with racks of herbs and flowers in clear plastic planters yesterday, and explained how they intend to cover the sides - and maybe even the roof - with vegetation once the trip is finished. Above is an artist's rendering of what it should look like when fully decked out.

The plants are packed inside when the trailer's on the move - so they won't bounce off whenever the trailer hits a pothole. The Armadillo sets up today on the Mall in Washington, then it's off to New Orleans and finally west. LaPointe and Hopkins say they hope to reach sunny Southern California by mid-July. Safe travels!

For more on the trailer, go here.