Posts tagged container garden

Green Design’s Vertical Gardens

Green Design in Sydney, Australia, defines a vertical garden as “a unique structure that holds indoor plants in a vertical and horizontal pattern in freestanding columns and walls.” They’ve taken that definition and built a freestanding wall of planters to create a vertical garden. Their type of greenwall can be used as a unique room divider since it is freestanding. They use recyclable plastic pots and the garden is resistant to mold. They also mention the living wall would be a form of advertising for your business since everyone would be talking about it… something I hadn’t thought of.

green room divider

They state that each pot can hold enough water to keep plants hydrated.. but you have to wonder how frequently they have to be watered and the work involved. If you’ve got a high green wall, you’re on a ladder each time you need to water unless you install an irrigation system. With this system, it doesn’t hide the irrigation pipes quite as nicely as a Patrick Blanc style living wall or a Woolly Pocket vertical garden… the pipes would be right out there in the open which would definitely impact the look. If you’re willing to go to the trouble of hand watering each planter, though, there’s no denying their wall looks good.

Living wall divider stairs

However, the company also partnered with the Green Wall Company which makes solid green walls instead of a wall of planters. That technique allows for a bigger wall with less of a watering headache. You can see in the photo below that there’s a metal resevoir holding the water which will be pumped to the top of the mini vertical garden automatically through a timer. You can’t see the irrigation pipes either.

Small Green Wall

Small Green Wall

Large green wall

Large green wall

Vertical garden cafe

Vertical garden cafe

Window sill vertical garden

Window sill vertical garden

Herb and Urban Garden makes the Urb Garden

Herb Garden

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

Urban Garden

Herb Gardening

Urb Garden

Urb Garden

Urb Garden

Container Gardening Vertically

Vertical container garden

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.