Condo or apartment living can be a bit frustrating at times as you feel you’re stuck in the middle of a concrete jungle. Since you typically find condos and apartments in a downtown core, you’re constantly surrounded by paved roads, bricked buildings, cars, shops, etc.. but relatively little in the way of gardens. I was living in a condo in Toronto, Canada, and I was itching for some living design I could use.. but there’s not much room in an under 500 sq ft condo.

Then I saw Patric LeBlanc’s mur vegetal http://www.verticalgardenpatrickblanc.com/ – Vertical Garden. That was about a year and a half ago. Since that time, I’ve been doing almost nothing but researching and experimenting on how to build a vertical garden. Patric’s mur vegetal or vertical garden was built using polyamide felt, massive sheets of PVC and a large, rigid steel structure the wall hangs on. The result is an amazing looking wall garden, but extremely intimidating for a home owner.. or even small business owner. The cost to build one of those gardens is extremely high.. and way more than I wanted to spend.

That’s what fueled my drive to build a vertical garden myself that I could put in my condo. I had a couple goals in mind: it must be relatively inexpensive, modular, green, and super simple to maintain. Right from the start I wanted to design something that I felt could be used by almost anyone, from homeowner to business owner, young and old alike.

As far as inexpensive goes, I was thinking that if I could get a good design going, then get it massed produced, it’d be super cheap per part. So I looked into that a bit more. I found that each piece I wanted to make have injection molded, I’d need between 10 and 20 thousand just to get the tool built, then I’d have to pay more for each part. That seemed a bit out of my league.

Then I tried making a couple designs out of acrylic. I bought all the supplies, used the same products they use to seal aquariums so I knew it would be plant safe.. and went to work. I quickly found that it’s ridiculously hard to make exact cuts on acrylic with the multiple small pieces needed to build the vertical garden and hang it. My design, I found, needed improvement to make it more simple (fewer cuts means a more solid product)… and.. I hated acrylic. I wanted something better.

After countless hours pouring over design options, I considered everything from using wood, marine epoxy coatings over wood, to small pvc sheets (like LeBlanc in a way), to topiary-style vertical gardens with sphagnum moss and everything in between. Each had its set-backs. Wood isn’t waterproof as a standalone, and attempting to build a water reservoir out of wood is obviously not going to work. Marine epoxy is expensive, emits toxic fumes and I wasn’t 100% sure it wouldn’t be harmful to plants – epoxy set for potable water would’ve been safe.. but even more expensive. Smaller PVC sheets had a limitation because it forced owners to use a pump or irrigation system and it’s not modular. Everything has to be custom fitted which would greatly increase the cost for each person. Just to note – an irrigation system’s not bad.. and can actually make life a lot easier, but it’s nice to have the option to manually or wick-water plants as well.. and the PVC idea didn’t allow for that. Topiary vertical gardens are interesting, but they use sphagnum moss.. and the thing with that is the moss itself can be expensive and it’s very messy. Pieces of the moss can fall off and I didn’t want that all over my floor.. and I’m thinking that sentiment is shared by you as well.

So, you ask, what is the stellar solution to this problem??

Foam. Here’s the thing. It’s super light.. which means hanging on a wall won’t put excess weight up there. I can also get 100% food safe foam boxes. That’s huge. You don’t want your plants having toxins leached into them by the planter box. If you choose to grow food in a vertical garden, then the desire to have a 100% food safe foam box is that much stronger. Some foam is produced to be used as insulation.. and that results in foam that’s not food safe.  With food safe foam boxes, they are waterproof and will allow your plants to thrive.

So, if you use foam, how to you avoid ugly? I would hate to have an ugly white foam box holding plants.. it would detract from the look of the plants.. plus foam by itself isn’t that strong.

That’s why I use a hard non-toxic casing around the foam box. It makes the foam really strong and looks great. And it’s paintable — in case you’re curious (and I found this out the hard way) if you spray paint directly on foam, the foam actually melts! Go figure. So having a strong outer-casing really makes the whole idea of building a vertical garden out of foam that much more practical.

The question I had now was where I should get that foam. If I just buy the foam, it’s not a great solution. Styrofoam takes a really long time to break down in landfills.. I forget where I read it, but if I remember right it takes 35 years. Also, if you just recycle the styrofoam by breaking it down and building new products, it’s very expensive and still uses signficant amounts of energy.

This what sealed the deal though – just going to a couple local businesses, I found where the businesses were going to be sending these boxes to the landfill. I managed to secure a steady source of these boxes, and each planter that’s built directly contributes to one more styrofoam box being recycled.

That’s one of the things that had the biggest impact on me. As I was looking at other designs, some can be recycled and some can’t… but I haven’t found one planter available that’s primarily made out of something that’s ALREADY BEEN recycled without wasting any more energy to recycle it.

More:

  1. Living Walls
  2. Living wall options
  3. Green Door – Midori no Tobira
  4. Green Wall Design