Do you have a boring patio or garden wall? Are you looking for a way to add some color and interest to the wall? If so, you should consider creating your very own colorful and living work of art to liven up that space – with succulents.

A vertical garden, or a hanging garden made of living plants, is a fantastic way to turn a ho-hum space into a focal point. Succulents are an excellent choice for a vertical garden because they are hearty, they grow slowly and they come in a range of colors, sizes and textures. Blending a variety of these plants together to create a vertical garden will create instant interest to your space.

Are you intrigued by the idea of adding such a garden to your space, but think that it will be too difficult to create and care for? Think again! A vertical succulent wall garden is actually quite easy to create and rather easy to care for.

Creating the Garden

To create your succulent wall garden, you are going to need a frame, potting soil and a collection of succulent clippings. You can purchase a preassembled frame from a home supply store, or you can create one yourself. Creating one yourself will require a picture frame, a wooden shadow box, planting fabric and potting soil.

After you add your potting soil to your planter, make sure that the wire is accessible. The wire is what will secure the plants in place. To plant the succulents, poke the ends through the wire and push them into the soil. After arranging the plants, let the frame lay flat in a sunny location so that they can take root. This will take anywhere from about 4 to 10 weeks. Once the plants take root, the garden is ready to be displayed on a wall. Alternatively, you can go with a ready-made living wall planter from uzplanters.

Making an Attractive Display

It really doesn’t require much to create an attractive succulent wall garden. There are so many different types of succulent plants and all of them are as attractive as the next. Use your eye for what you think looks best on how to arrange them in the planter. Group together plants that you think look the best. A word of advice; creating a cluster of several of the same types of succulents will make for a very eye-catching display.

Light Considerations

When it comes to hanging your succulent wall garden, you are going to want to display it in a space that receives a lot of sun. Succulents require full sunlight in order to thrive. This means that the space you hang the garden should receive a minimum of six hours of direct sunlight. These plants will survive in areas that receive slightly less sunlight, but they will not thrive as well as they would in direct sunlight.

Watering Your Garden

As with all plants, your succulent wall garden will require regular watering. These plants should be watered when they approach dryness, which is about every 7 days or so. In order to determine whether or not your plants are approaching dryness, use your finger to feel the soil. If it feels on the dry side, the plants will need watering.

To water, remove the planter from the wall and lay it flat. Water the planter lightly and allow the water to drain well before replacing it on the wall.

A succulent wall garden will be sure to add instant interest and life to your space. With little maintenance, these gardens are an ideal addition to your outdoor space.

This framed vertical garden is created using a Bright Green Grovert living wall kit. Below is a quick video showing to plant it up and hang it.

Foodies this is your chance if you don’t have a large garden – you can create your own vertical garden inside or outside and fill it with organic, home grown vegetables! Yum!  Growing vegetables in a vertical garden is probably one of the most practical usages of a vertical garden and has become increasingly popular especially since Amy Goldman created a wall of lettuce for the Philadelphia International Flower Show which was 9 feet high and 40 feet wide. Her wall included 6 different variety of lettuces with 3,000 leafy heads!

The creator of lettuce vertical vegetable garden was praised because if you want to create an outdoor vegetable garden, this example showed how easy it was to access the vegetables and maintain them. A person doesn’t have to bend to use the garden and was considered perfect for baby boomer retirees who love to garden but have difficultly bending, and having a vertical garden means you give yourself the opportunity to stand up whilst you’re gardening.

The most obvious benefit about a vertical vegetable garden is that you can eat it. Also, you can include different plants to make it look beautiful.  There are an array of edible plants that you can include in a vegetable vertical garden including lettuce, mixed herbs, cherry tomatoes, sage, rosemary, celery leaf and you can also add pansy’s which are lovely colorful inclusion on both a wall and in a salad.

You can organize the plants in such a manner so they look good, and you don’t need to add fertilizer as for a vegetable vertical garden you’re not trying to harvest like crazy, and also too much fertilizer for some vegetables ruins the flavor.

Top tips to growing a vertical vegetable garden:

1. Pick your wall – It is most common for a vegetable garden to have a sunny wall with typically four hours per day as the starting point for a vegetable garden. However, if your wall is shady, make sure you consider what you’re growing because different plant varieties thrive in shade so you are not limited by the sun!
2. Determine the look you want to achieve when you create your edible wall, there are many different types of apparatus on the market. Try woolly pockets which are known to be one of the best vertical garden solutions and are made of recycled plastic materials and often come with a mounting frame: Felt Pocket Vertical Garden
3. Select your vegetables and remember the root depth of your vegetables. Consider what’s typically grown in the regional area which you live. Try foods you love and would want to cook with – remember it’s a wall you can eat. Have fun experimenting with different fruits or vegetables like small melons, broccoli, brussel sprouts, mustard seeds.
4. Irrigate – if you are time poor but love your garden, it’s often wise to include an easy to install drip system which is one of the easiest ways to look after the plants on your living wall. Here’s an irrigator from uzplanters.com

For many people a garden can be a source of nutritious plants and this can be achieved via a vertical garden. Urban Zeal Planters has a fine selection of products which are suitable for creating a vertical vegetable garden.