Go vertical if you don't have much space for plants, or if you've used up every inch of ground and are looking for ways to squeeze more living green into your life.
At the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show in March, the judges' favorite garden was a rooftop garden for a highrise from New York designer Rebecca Cole. It featured decorative outdoor living wall plantings made from succulents and groundcovers such as bronze and Black Scallop ajuga, stonecrop, and hen and chicks. Mondrianesque blocks of light and dark greens contrasted with red- and black-tinged foliage. Textures ranged from ferny brass buttons to lettucelike sedums. A focal-point tapestry in a garden room featured a large skewed heart formed from lighter green plants surrounded by contrasting plants, and framed by yet a different plant.
Some of the same plants were used horizontally under an outdoor glass-topped coffee table. The glass was several inches above the plants, to allow air circulation and room to grow.
A second display garden also featured a vertical wall, this one with herbs and natives as well as succulents, and a cooling wall of water in the middle of them. Rosemary, chamomile, lemon thyme, and oregano were interspersed with native strawberry, armeria, and heuchera. San Francisco designer Jennifer Kearney of Fiddleleaf Fine Garden Designs said the plants were grown in coir, a stiff medium that holds water well and stays in place. Soilless planting media such as coir also reduce the weight of wall planters.
Vertical gardening is eminently practical for anyone who can't bend down. You can have a wall garden at shoulder height, said Milwaukee TV host Melinda Myers, who talked about incorporating pretty edible plants into your garden. Salad greens that you pick at 4 inches, as well as trailing herbs, would be ideal for vertical planting on a wall that gets sun for at least a few hours a day. It is possible to have your wall art and eat it too!
The Buehler Enabling Garden at the Chicago Botanic Garden has a vertical garden, and its Horticultural Therapy Dept. sells a $2 fact sheet called Vertical Gardening with instructions for building your own planter.
If you want to buy a container, the least expensive option is a sturdy black plastic succulent-growing grid, with angled-down planting cubicles. Smith and Hawken sells a $400 wood-framed unit with irrigation included. A larger selection as well as an inspiring gallery of wall gardens – is available from Elevated Landscape Technologies and G-Sky.
By the way, yet another vertical gardening system was pioneered by Patrick Blank of Paris. Since 1994, he has been planting vertical gardens both indoor and outdoor, on multistory buildings, using a huge variety of plants, and he has written a book about his gardens. A botanist, he was inspired by plants growing on rock walls. His system is simple: a metal frame, a sheet of PVC for waterproofing, and a sheet of polyamide felt as the planting medium. He claims his system has no height or size limit.
© 2009 Tanya Kucak