Do it yourself vertical garden

This is the classic living wall planter. It’s modular and it’s made out of recycled foam materials and non-toxic coatings. It’s easy to make and easy to use. This plan will take you through how to build a vertical garden for your home or office. I’ve tried to be as detailed as possible without going crazy. I’ve included some different options you have in building a living wall so that adds to its length. If you have any questions or thoughts, please let me know. Thanks!

There’s 10 steps. Let’s get started.

First you’ll need the following:

Foam - Step 1 gives more specifics
Foam Coat - A non-toxic easy-to-apply coating that adheres to foam and makes a hard casing. Cleans up with water.
Boost or Bounce - A liquid that can be added to the foam coat to make it waterproof. It’s non-toxic
Foam Fusion – A liquid glue that won’t melt foam over time. It takes a bit to set, but once it sets it’s waterproof and will go the distance.
Something to cut the foam with – A hot wire foam cutter will slice through foam like butter and there’s no foam pellets to clean up after. An X-Acto knife will work, and you could even use a knife from the kitchen, but foam will be flying everywhere – you were warned =)
Paint brush or putty knife/drywall trowel and tupperware container.
Paint - if you so desire. The natural colour is a very light tan. Painting it also helps make it more waterproof.
Plants and potting soil
Two screws, two anchors, a ruler and a drill – all for hanging it.

1. Get the foam! – Right off the bat you have two ways to do this: the recycling way and the regular buy at the store way.

The way I do it, and what I think is the easiest and most beneficial way to do it, is to go to your local grocery store and go right to the meat/fish department. Meat and fish are delivered in these FDA approved 100% food safe foam boxes and will normally be thrown out. Just go ask someone behind the counter for some of the foam boxes they’re going to throw out. At my grocery store, they usually have different sizes and types of boxes and have 2-3 of the boxes I want every day. The boxes I get are about 9″ x 24″ x 6″ and have a lid. You then will go home and rinse these outside or in your bathtub with soap and water. Let them dry and you can to go step 2.
If you go the regular buy-at-the-store-way, you should be able to find the foam you need at Home Depot. Often times it’s around the insulation section of the store. The Home Depot here allows you to buy sheets of white EPS foam. EPS foam is the best to work with typically, but you’re welcome to try other types. You need to then make a box around 9″ x 24″ x 6″ in size.

Foam planter

2. Glue the lid to the box – you can’t just use any regular glue. If you do, the foam will melt. You’d be surprised how easily it melts, and some glues will melt the foam over a period of days to weeks… which will be a problem when trying to waterproof it. I use Foam Fusion and it works well. If you’re buying foam from Home Depot, use the foam fusion to glue your pieces together.

Styrofoam planter

3. Make your cuts - You can use a hot wire foam cutter if you want to cut down on the mess.. but you’ll want to be in a ventilated area. Alternatively, you can use an X-acto knife or a knife from your kitchen. The hot wire cutter will take the longest and will smell a bit like burnt foam, but the cuts will be the smoothest. These are the four types of cuts you need to make:

A rectangular hole in the top of the planter that’s about 20″ long and 3″ wide. This’ll be where you pour the soil into you wall planter.
Between 5 and 10 holes on the side of your planter. Each hole is about 2.5″ in diameter. What I did was just trace the bottom of a small plant pot (which was about a 2.5″) with a pencil, then cut out the holes. Of course, if you’re planting smaller plants you can always make the holes smaller. Because you pack the soil during construction and the roots of the plants grow to hold the soil, you don’t have to worry much about soil falling out. The longer the plants are in the planter, the less soil will fall out.
Styrofoam wall planter

Two holes will be put into the back of your wall planter for hanging. I used the hot wire foam cutter for this as it’s the easiest way to make small holes. Put the holes at the top of the back of the wall planter spaced about 8″ apart.
The fourth type of cut is optional. You can cut out drainage holes in the bottom of your planter if you choose. To make the drainage holes, you’ll cut about four or so holes across the bottom of you planter about the size of your pinky finger. Things to think about:
If you’re planting one planter inside, you won’t want drainage holes for obvious reasons. You could also choose to wick water a planter without drainage holes if you want. If you have your planters outside, you can put drainage holes in the planter. Also, if you’re planning on making a bunch, you may want the top ones to have drainage holes.. this will allow you to pour water through the top planter and the water will drip through one and then the other and so on. Warning – don’t go ape wild with this. It takes a while for each planter to absorb the water and have the water to drip through the drainage holes, so if you stack them too high, your arm will be very sore trying to slowly pour the water into your garden. *A potential add-on would be a foam reservoir at the top and bottom of your row of planters. The reservoir at the top would have lots of very tiny holes in its bottom to allow water to slowly drip out. You’d fill that with water and the water would slowly go from one wall planter to the next until it got to your water reservoir at the bottom. I may add instructions on exactly how to do this at a later date.*

Mixing foam coat

4. Mix your foam coat – Instructions on how to do this are included right on the label, but basically you just put water in the bottom of your mixing container (I use a tupperware container), add some boost (put about as much boost in the container as you did the water – 1:1), then add the foam coat. Then mix it all together. You can either use a paintbrush or a putty knife/drywall knife. I like mine the consistency of half melted ice cream well mixed. If you’re an ice cream fiend, you know what I mean. You may just want to experiment here, however. If you go thick, it can create a cool effect and fill holes and cracks well. If you go thin, it’s easier to sand and goes on smoother. If you dilute it with Boost more than water, you can thin it without it getting weaker. You can optionally add Grit here which gives the foam a cool effect, but makes it harder to sand.

Applying thin foam coat.

5. Apply the foam coat – using a paint brush or putty knife just apply it to the foam.. that’s pretty much it. It doesn’t take long to dry – maybe an hourish for a semi-hard coating.. and gets very hard overnight. The thing I love about it is that it doesn’t smell, it’s not toxic and it cleans up with water.. so it’s very easy to work with.

6. Paint if you want – It’ll take most paints fine. When you paint, take care not to let it touch the foam or it will more than likely melt. Unless you’re using water based paints. In which case it may melt, but probably won’t.

Hanging the planter

7. Drill holes in the wall – Hold the planter up to the wall as you want it hung. Then drill holes through the two holes in the top of the planter that you’d made earlier. Drill through the drywall to make room for the anchors, then push the anchors into the wall.

(This step may be optional. If you’re hanging the planter on say, a wooden railing on a deck, you can just drill screws into the deck when you hang the planter.. you don’t need to predrill any holes.)

8. Plant it – Go to your local nursery or Home Depot or wherever you want and get your plants and potting mix.

Pour your mix in the planter until you get to the first row of holes.
Then take the plants that are going into the first row of holes and gently hit the root ball against the side of the planter to shake some of the dirt off the roots.
Then stick the plants root first through the holes.
Next pour more potting soil up to the next row of holes, making sure to press down on the potting soil to make sure it and the plants stay firmly in place. (Don’t go too crazy here as you want oxygen to get to the roots, but you can press it down firmly)
To finish, fill up the potting mix to the top and press it down firmly. Now you’re ready to hang.