Vertical garden ideas
by Julia
Shoe tree herb garden
One of the concepts we are batting around that would serve both house decor and functional needs is the concept of a vertical garden. There are some really exceptional, artistic versions of this idea (e.g., Patrick Blanc’s work), and some more functional implementations (e.g. the shoe tree-based implementations, as seen on the Craftzine blog). I like these because they are beautiful, but also because, particularly if you choose edible plants, they can serve a real functional purpose. Plus, since the new house tends to run a little warm, I suspect it might be helpful to add a little greenery.
There are some helpful videos online, like this short clip on vimeo about how to implement a Patrick Blanc style garden:
Patrick Blanc-style vertical garden
There seem to be three primary types of vertical gardens. In one, you basically build a wall out of a moisture-retaining substance (usually a synthetic or a fabric) and create little pockets in that substance into which the plants are placed. This is the technique that Patrick Blanc uses. From what I have found online, it looks like irrigation proves out to be very challenging for this sort of application, though is does create a look and feel of an entire, unbroken wall of greenery–so, on the one hand, very neat-looking. On the other, probably cost prohibitive and difficult to implement (and, on balance, I’d prefer not to have to ask the condo association’s permission to put something up).
The second implementation is often seen in outdoor vegetable gardens, and basically centers around creating a tall rack over a trough-style planter with vertical or netting elements, then choosing plants that tend to grow long or tall anyway (e.g., vine-based tomato plants, beans, etc.) to twist and grow around those vertical elements. An example of that construction can be seen in this video:
Garden Girl vertical vegetable garden video
While this would probably be the easiest and cheapest to implement, I don’t think it really has the aesthetic appeal to be something I’d want inside the house.
The third implementation basically involves a vertical pot rack, with the gardener to be forced to either make careful choices of plants that don’t tend to grow too tall, or to prune carefully to keep the plants from interfering with each other. The shoe-tree-plant-rack thing is a good example of how you might implement something like this, and there are also some specially-built planters, like this one I found on flickr. I like this concept in part because of it’s simplicity – really, it’s just a space-conscious way to organize your potted plants, and so caring for the associated plants is much the same as caring for normal potted plants – no special irrigation system required.
I saw this post recently on how to build a copper pot rack using plumbing parts:
copper pipe pot rack
I was thinking it might be neat to build something like this, allowing for a number of different sizes of pots, and then use something like hanging planters to hold the plants themselves. This could also be combined with something like the shoe tree planter – have one side dedicated to uniform small planters, the other with more variability to account for different pot and plant sizes.