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.