Living Walls and Vertical Gardens » living wall

Barrel Cactus Living Wall by Plant Solutions

Gavin — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:37:49 +0000

The Barrel Cactus Vertical Living Wall was built in Scottsdale, Arizona. Designed by Joe Zazzera, GRP, LEED AP and installed by the Plant Solutions Team in May this year, this project is a vertical living wall using golden barrel cacti and a custom built frame. Dunham Workshop built the vertical frame out of steel. The intent was to create a piece of “living art” to draw attention to the entry of the Plant Solutions design showroom.

Photo 1: This vertical living Greenwall system was an experiment in design and fabrication. The base Frame was fabricated out of raw steel for a contemporary look. It was purposefully left un-finished as part of the intended design.

cactus living wall

Photo 2: The design called for 60 golden barrel cacti to be locked into a steel frame, rebar, soil and Rock. The entire frame will be attached to a block wall in the front of the Showroom entrance, enticing potential

Clients.

barrel cactus vertical garden

Photo 3: Since golden barrel cacti have shallow root systems, the frame was engineered with Concrete nails welded to the back of the frame. Essentially, the barrels would “hang” on the concrete Nails and be locked into place with rebar and granite lock.

Photo 4: The day after the wall was planted, we had an event at our facility so we decided to place a Piece of glass over the top of the frame and use it as a buffet table. We also created a great piece of furniture.

Photo 5: When completed, the frame, plants, soil and rock together weighed around 500 pounds. Furniture casters and elbow grease were the best way to move the completed unit around and into Place.

Photo 6: The completed installation would face west so we were a little concerned about late Afternoon sun until the plants acclimate. Simple anchor hardware was installed to hold the frame in place. The frame itself had offset feet but the anchors will keep it from movement.

Photo 7: Golden Barrel cacti are not only plentiful in our part of the country, they also create a highly sought after design effect. We especially like the clean repeating pattern look.

Photo 8: Raw steel is an honest material, the natural rust will continue to change the sculpture over time and with the weather. The root systems will further lock the wall into place over time as they develop.

Photo 9: Time will tell how the plants and the wall will hold up. The frame was designed with access For netafim laser line irrigation that could be manually connected with a water machine. Until established, they made the decision to hand control the watering.

Photo 10: The completed design accents the building, blends with the space and the design of the environment. It also creates a “wow” factor for retail passers-by and a draw for patrons.

Eco Walls

Gavin — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 11:26:32 +0000

Eco Walls, based in Bordentown, NJ, is expanding the green footprint in urban environments. Where new construction in urban environments often means losing greenspace, Eco Walls reverses that trend using living walls.

Eco Walls

They grow their plants right in their greenhouse in a proprietary blend of soilless medium design to wick and lock in moisture while providing optimum levels of oxygen, and beneficial microbes to the plants roots. The mix eliminates the dry out, rot, and matrix decay associated with conventional soil-based mediums.

Greenhouse

As a full service vertical gardening company, Eco Walls designs and builds vertical gardens with their modular panels. They come assembled a unique blend of inorganic planting medium for a fast, simple construction process. First the J channel is mounted, then the EcoWall® is hung. Next, the self automated irrigation system is attached and then planting can begin.

EcoWalls construction

Living wall system

Green wall system

They have done some pretty neat aquaponic applications (incorporating aquatic animals) into some of their vertical gardens. One such application was completed at Rutgers University and acts as both a botanical display for the university and an educational element for students; highlighting ecologic interaction between the plants and fish. The fish produce waste, which is broken down by microorganisms on the EcoWall and used by the plants as nutrients. The plants remove pollutants from the water; creating pristine water parameters for the fish.

aquaponics

aquaponic installation

Joe Zazzera and Tournesol’s Vertical Garden

Gavin — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:10:31 +0000

Joe and his company, Plant Solutions, have been providing Interior Plantscape design, installation and maintenance services in the Phoenix area since 1981. He’s actively involved in seeing indoor plants adopted into the Indoor Environmental Quality section of the LEED rating system.

According to a recent study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., indoor air can be up to 10 times more polluted than the air outside. A separate NASA study found interior plants can reduce airborne molds that cause sickness by as much as 50 percent. Through interiorscaping, Joe is actively helping remove VOC’s from the air in the homes and offices of his clients.

Terrascreen

Joe worked with Tournesol Siteworks to make a vertical garden from their TerraScreen product. Joe installed two of the 4′ by 4′ panels in Plant Solutions’ conference room to show prospective clients.

Terrascreen

This is how it works:

All modules are made of black powder-coated galvanized steel wire, with integral brackets to fasten the panel to the wall. Panels may be mounted adjacent to one another to create larger coverage areas.

Plants are placed in their 6″ grow pot directly into the black no-hole cachepot. The hanger system keeps the plants in place. Replacement is simple – just remove the plant from its cachepot, put another in its place.

A pressurized tank-based irrigation system is also available for the TerraScreen system. Ask your Tournesol Siteworks salesperson for details.

• Panel system stands 4-5/8” from wall, but requires minimum of 18” from wall for plants
• All TerraScreen™ systems should include a catch basin mounted below
• TerraScreen™ systems work best if wall behind panels is waterproofed and painted black.
• Approx. panel load – 170lbs. for 48”h, 250lbs. for 72”h TerraScreen™

From Joe:

The wall was easily installed with no excess engineering or parts. We mounted like-painted 1×2s first, and then mounted the panels to them. When we first put the wall in, we used it without the additional watering system. This has required a lot of maintenance time, so when we had the opportunity we retrofitted the wall with the watering system and now have to dedicate much less time to maintenance.
We show this wall to our clients, mostly law offices, that have fresh flower budgets in place. We can lease them this wall with a plant rotation for about the same price they are paying for their weekly or twice-weekly flower rotations. It’s much more of a conversation piece, everyone comments on how cools and hip it is – they cannot help it!
The plants in this wall are pothos along with Neorgilia “Medusa” for color from Olive Hill nurseries. The Neorgilia variety seems to hold up longer than other varieties, thereby providing a better return on investment – and the clients love them.

Interiorscaping

Tournesol Siteworks has a few more interesting vertical garden products out there that you may want to check out.

If you’re a vertical garden installer, please feel free to add yourself to the directory on this site – it’s free. Also, if you have questions or design ideas, or projects, you can post them to the forum. This is a great spot to connect with others that are looking to build or install greenwalls. If you’re interested in our website traffic stats (I’m a stats junky myself) you can see greentopsites.com. If you have created a living wall that you’d like to see featured here, let me know!

Vertical Garden in Jamieson Place Calgary, Alberta

Gavin — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 01:41:57 +0000

Greenery Office Interiors is owned by a Calgarian, Joanne Young, who recently installed the largest living wall in Western Canada in Jamieson Place. They used a pre-planted modular vertical gardening system to create two walls inside the building. The living walls get natural light via huge skylights in the ceiling and are drip fed on a timed irrigation system. The small wall is 750 sq ft and the large wall is 1200 sq ft… there are over 20,000 plants in 20 different varieties!

I love the way they’re collecting the water from the irrigation system. They have dark stones setup above a grate so the water trickles through the vertical garden and into the reservoir while hiding the grate itself. It gives a great, natural look. Global TV’s Gil Tucker did an interview that you can see here.

They used McRae’s Modular Greenwall System which includes a special growing foam, a powder coated metal grid and a waterproof backing. Each grid can be either pregrown or planted in place. You don’t need to clean the dirt off the plants.. just stuff the plants into the foam right from 3″ pots. The roots can easily spread in the foam and it gives the right combination of air and water to help the plants grow. You can see a diagram of the system at the bottom of this post.

Stones over drip irrigation

Touching up the Greenwall

Greenwall construction

Sun from the skylight above hits the living wall

Touching up the Greenwall in the hard-to-reach places

Close up of McRae's Vertical Gardening system

Greenwall Diagram