Here’s the first living wall of Istanbul. Designed as a billboard for Siemens, the 90 m2 garden is located on a building in Şişhane undergoing renovation. The garden is home to 4000 plants belonging to 8 different species, which do not require soil to survive. www.dikeybahcem.com for more details. You can see uzplanters.com for planters to make your own vertical garden.

The vertical garden wraps around three sides of the Natura Towers’ square and faces south, east and north. The green wall surface has several breaks around doors and shop windows. The wall garden covers the sides of two sets of stairs that connect the square with the upper and lower levels.

The north facing wall has only indirect sunlight. It has a variety of ferns such as Asplenium, Athyrium, Pteris and Polystichum, and many broad leaved species like different Begonia, Pilea, and Arum. Ferns do really well in lower levels of light and are found in many successful living walls.

There are also contrasting fields with thin, linear leafed plants – like Iris japonica and some varieties of Chlorophytum comosum. Combined with a few solitary, larger exotic plants, like Philodendron bipinnatifidum, Platycerium bifurcatum and Monstera deliciosa, the living wall has a moist, woodland character with a tropical touch.

For a large part of the day, the south facing wall is shadowed by one of the buildings, but still, the sun exposure creates significantly different growing conditions. Unlike the other walls where most plants have rather modest flowering, this wall is more colorful, for example species of Ceanothus, Geranium, Fuchsia, Bergenia, Cuphea, Heuchera, Lantana, Pelargonium and Campanula. There is also some areas with grass and grass-like plants. The intention is to create small, light, moving grass-fields framing some of the openings.

by Vertical Garden Designs

The Plantominium is a very simple way of gardening vertically, and a bit of a different approach to making a living wall. It fits in a small envelope, but unfurls to hold 6 commonly sized plant pots in a vertical display just over 5 feet tall. These pots – 4.5 inch round, 4 inch square (with beveled corners), or 3.5 inch square – can be found at most gardening centers. It takes about one minute to put it together and then it’s done.  It makes for a “wall” when several are used together, but .

Vertical gardens

A wall of kalanchoe set up at a nursery on long island