Posts tagged living fence
Sustainable Vertical Garden Design
Mar 3rd
Here’s an interesting set of vertical garden designs from Sustainable Garden Design in Perth, Australia. As you can see right away, there’s an interesting choice of plants for the vertical garden due to the climate and the designs are really unique. Using a combination of rocks and interesting building materials, these living walls really stand out… and somehow still work with the landscape.
Unique living wall
Rock Tower Living Walls
Vertical garden as a garden screen
Green wall garden screen close up
Unique Vertical garden
Pleaching and Espalier
Mar 1st
Pleaching and espalier are two techniques used to create interesting living walls. Pleaching involves weaving the branches of closely grouped trees together. The result is a living wall created over many years. Farmers use this technique with fruit trees as well as with hedges to make them more secure. Note the size of the living wall compared to the people in the background by the gate… it’s massive.
Arley Hall, Northwich, Cheshire in Northern England
Pleaching isn’t hard, but it does require training the plants early. There aren’t many North American trees that pleach well so if you’re looking to do it, you’d likely want to check with an arborist to ensure your work pays off.
Pleached apple trees
Trees that have pliable branches are the best to use and include apple, linden and hawthorn trees. The picture above is of a bunch of apple trees pleached to form a pathway.
Pleaching trees and hedges
To make the hedge above, the specimens should be planted 4-5 feet apart . The lower part of the trunk shouldn’t have any branches on it. You’ll tie jute twine between the trees to be a guide for the branches to grow together. After the plants grow and thicken, you can get rid of the twine and you’ll have a living wall.
Espalier services shows a conservatory at Longwood Gardens which uses the espalier technique to grow the plant along a wire fence to make the rooms of the large building more intimate. Espalier is the art of make plants into 2D objects instead of 3D. You can also make this wall out of certain types of fruit trees which has the benefit of allowing you to pick fruit right off the wall.
Indoor espalier fence
Here are three apple trees at Longwood Gardens again made into u-shaped espaliers. It saves space as they’re grown flat against the wall and allows you to pick the fruit easily. Below shows espaliers on a larger scale. The first shows the setup began its first tier at 4 ft high to create the living fence. The second is two years later.
Espalier rows living fence
Espalier rows
Here’s a few more espaliers from Gus&otherthings showing them used as a living fence and directly against a wall as a vertical garden.
Espalier living walls
Espalier green walls
Espalier living fence
Living Green Fence
Nov 27th
Here’s another take on a living wall/living fence. This one is a pretty simple to make it looks like. So they’ve built two trenches along the line they want the fence to go. Then they lean rows of willow trees against each other. Then they fill the gap in between the willow trees with dirt halfway up. The willow trees are installed in the fence without any branches or roots, but they eventually grow roots to become a thick green fence that’s very solidly built. The fence doesn’t break down that easily because it’s living, so it adapts to the environment. The original stakes that are used to build the wall do eventually break down, but the willow trees and their roots hold the dirt in the middle in place so it can last almost indefinitely. The thick wall of dirt between the trees also helps with making the green fence a solid sound barrier.
