Living Walls and Vertical Gardens » green wall

Living wall installation in Brazil

Gavin — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 22:35:07 +0000

Pierre-André Martin from eMbyá in Brazil sent me a great video of a time lapse of a vertical garden build. This is a short animation of an 8 square meter Brazilian living wall created by eMbyá, a young landscape architecture and environment firm from Rio de Janeiro.

As it shows on the video it is a totally customized to the space and has more than 20 different species. Some of the vegetal highlight are rare native Brazilian philodendrons such as philodendron panduriforme or philodendron radiathum. Native and exotic bromelias also made part of this composition of more than 180 plants.

The time lapse video show a 4 days work using a physical support made from recycled toothpaste tubes shaped into panels covered with the traditional geotextile felt. What a great idea.

Garden Beet’s Living Wall

Gavin — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:59:15 +0000

Garden Beet created a great living wall here with the Woolly Pocket living wall system. She’s a landscape architect in the UK and has done a number of installations with Woolly Pockets. It really adds some pizazz to the backyard.

Woolly Pocket Living Wall

Living wall system

Greenwall installation in Phyto Universe

Gavin — Sat, 01 May 2010 18:57:30 +0000

Phyto Salon's Greenwall

Phyto Universe, an upscale Manhattan salon, had a 2,850 square foot greenwall installed by engineer Laurent Corradi with Plant Wall Design. Before construction, Laurent presented a concept for the digital sequencing or mapping, which dictates what species of plants would go where, and how far apart. “Plants have different textures and shapes, so sequencing is like painting with plants” explains Corradi. I love that quote.

Corradi constructed a 13 foot doublefaced wall of structural aluminiun with a layer of pvc on each side. Layers of a special felt fabric that does not require soil – aqua-nap – were attached to the PVC on either side of the wall. Then, he installed UV tracks to provide artificial lighting on both the window and the interior sections of the wall. The UV reflective lamps shine on plants for 8 hours daily to provide essential light plants require. The wall temperature is set between 50 to 75 degrees fahrenheit to mimic a rainforest climate.

Greenwall

A total of 9,000 plants are on the wall including philodendron, ponytail, hibiscus, ferns, anthurium, ficus and begonia. The plants have their ‘roots’ from all over the world. Some are from the Amazon, Africa, Guyana, the Caribbean and French Polynesia.

The plants love a humid environment and don’t actually have to be watered often. However, when they do get watered, Laurent Corradi installed an irrigation system with 14 different zones in the greenwall. The location of the plants on the wall also has an effect on the the amount of water needed. The plants closer to the bottom tend to get more water at the top as the water steadily drips down the wall. Each zone is watered for one minute 3 times daily.

It took approximately two months to conceive, construct, and plant the 2,900-square-foot garden, as well as to monitor growth and troubleshoot the issue of dying plants.

You can see the video below – the greenwall is discussed in the last half of the 90 second video.

A Vertical Garden from Recycled Junk

Gavin — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 23:39:13 +0000

Susan Cohan visited the Philadelphia Flower Show and caught a couple pictures of some interesting displays. The first design is of a floating garden using beakers, string and plants. That gives about the coolest effect of all time. I love how they’ve raised some beakers above the others to make a sort of table with a wave.

Floating garden

Handmade Gardens built a garden from garbage and plants. It looks surprisingly good! It’s a bit of an interesting take on what you can do with some creativity, junk and plants.

Vertical Garden from Junk

Recycled vertical garden