Outdoor vertical succulent garden
Feb 3rd
Succulent living wall
Joan and William Feldman had a backyard with a little pond in LA, California. However.. it didn’t have enough green for their tastes so they wanted to spice it up a bit. The didn’t have a lot of room.. land prices being what they are.. so they needed a solution to get some green on the bare walls to make them really pop.
Landscape designer Mia Lehrer and her associate, Holly Kuwayama, came up with a solution.. which was to hang a garden on the wall, that could thrive without much soil or water. Succulents were used as they need little water, so they’re light, and they have shallow roots, so not much soil is required.
Vines can take a while to fill up a space.. whereas vertical gardens can be installed relatively quickly. They also have the added advantage of being able to use a bunch of different colors from different plants in the design. They went various nurseries for the right plants to use in the living wall: echeverias and aeoniums, plump sedums and crassulas, senecios and kalanchoes… which all said and done.. provided a lot of interesting colors.
Succulents vertical garden
The designers came up with using a three-by-five-foot steel armature with two layers of metal mesh to create a wide, shallow box. The box was then stuffed with a blend of sphagnum moss and cactus mix to use in place of soil.. and was planted with hundreds of cuttings. About 45 days later, once the plants took root, the living wall was ready to mount, with eyebolts and heavy brackets.
For maintenance.. all that’s needed is a spray from the hose once a week.. fertilizer isn’t needed at all. The only issue they had was some of the aeoniums grew a bit too big to keep the uniform look of the wall planter.. so they have to be cut back every once and a while.
All in all.. it’s a great design that really makes a small outdoor space green up.
Herb and Urban Garden makes the Urb Garden
Feb 2nd
Herb Garden
This is the ultimate herb garden. It’s not yet in production, but was designed by Xavier Calluaud and shows lots of promise. It employs drip watering, worms and compost to provide fresh edible plants. The design is named “Urb Garden” and was designed in Australia. The Urb Garden is a vertical garden designed to encourage personal food production in small urban domestic environments.
The vertical garden is compact which is perfect for balconies, courtyards and community gardens.
It’s made from HDPE which is easily recycled and fully weather resistant. Food scraps are then placed into the worm farm which produces liquid fertilizer. Water is then added to the fertilizer and the liquid is pumped up to a holding tank. It then drips down through the growing pods and then drains back to the tank to be recycled through the system. The potting mix can be refreshed with castings from the worm farm before replanting.
Urban Garden
Urb Garden
Urb Garden
Container Gardening Vertically
Feb 1st
container gardening vertically
Here’s a diy guide to container gardening – vertically. It has 35 containers growing plants.. could even be something like strawberries.. that takes up the footprint the same size as one plant. But since it grows up, this container garden uses less space.
The basic idea is to use PVC piping (you don’t even have to glue/cement it) with holes drilled through to insert galvanized wire. Then you just insert your pots into the loops of the wire and you’re about done.
The guide is from here and that gives a plan of how to build a vertical container garden but I’ll put a run through here. The whole thing can be built for about 20 bucks.
The first step is to get some galvanized wire. Bailing wire will rust. You’ll want to wrap the wire around something to make it a circle. You could use the container pots themselves, or use an abs pipe. You’ll use some kind of pliers to twist the wires together at the ends. Below are some pictures:
Forming the loop
Cutting the wire to the right length
Making the wire ends 90 degrees
You’re going to want to tilt up the twisted part of the wire about 90 degrees. That way when you stick it in the holes in the PVC pipe, it’ll stay put indefinitely.
Next you’re going to assemble the PVC structure. You can customize it to whatever size you want. In the end, you just need some pipes and some T’s.. that’s about it. This one uses 3/4″ PVC and 3/4″ PVC Tees. Stick the ends of the pipes in the T’s as you see fit to build your structure. Then drill some holes in the pipe to insert the tips of the galvanized wire circles. The holes will be 1/8″ to 5/6″ depending on the size of the wire you used. To finish it, just stick the pots in the circles of the wires and you’re done.
Making the structure
Holes for the wire
Wire loops for the containers
It’s a great idea for a container garden just for use in a small space like a balcony of a condo/apartment or a small spot in your garden.
Russian topiaries
Jan 29th
Topiary pillars
A reader from Russia, Vadim, emailed me about some of the amazing topiary work he’s done there. Some of the work includes huge topiary pillars that surround a patio outdoors as well as some very interesting topiary designs of animals such as deers and bears. Usually I don’t post topiaries on here unless it’s to do with a design of a living wall, but these topiaries are amazing and all hand made by Vadim. I thought it’s something most of you would be interested in seeing.
From Vadim himself:
I studied landscape design.
Then dabbled in Topiary haircut.
From this came the creation of sculptures.
Unlike other I do sculptures for the overgrowth with a detailed drawing of the animal’s head.
This allows you to get the overgrowth of a spectacular figure in the garden.
Here’s a link to his site (it’s in Russian but has pictures). If you’re interested in his work and want to contact him his email is kvnru at mail dot ru
Topiary pillars
Garden Bear Sculpture
Garden Bear Art
Large topiary deer
Garden deer
Garden topiary
