Judy Hoysak has an interesting take on building indoor gardens. She made one garden with the idea that the climbing vegetables like beans and tomatoes would grow vertically indoors while taking up little space. She says:

“The Bean Screen is a room divider that grows beans.

Traditionally, vegetables gardens are thought of as utilitarian, and the potential beauty of vegetable plants ignored in favor of non-edible ornamentals. I use existing negative space opportunities within the home to minimize the footprint of these products.

These pieces are using ready-made self-watering planters and T-5 fluorescent plant grow lights and the structure is made from Plyboo Strand and aluminum.”

Indoor vertical vegetable garden

Indoor vertical vegetable garden

She has taken a fairly common idea of using glass as a table top and gave it extra functionality by growing plants right underneath it. It’s a great spacesaver idea. If you need a coffee table anyway.. in a room with lots of light.. her design makes a lot of sense. You can see in each of the designs a small pipe.. maybe PVC? but that pipe will be used to fill up the water resevoir in the bottom of the planter. The great thing with this design, is that it wicks the water up through the dirt in the planter. Water can wick 12″ or 300 mm high, so it ensures the plants get all the water they need. As the plants use the water, the soil dries up, and more water is wicked from the reservoir. Then to fill it up, you just need to pour water down the PVC pipe to fill it back up again. It reduces the frequency of your watering quite a bit, greatly lowers the risk for root rot, and takes the guess work out of watering since the plants let you know when they’re thirsty.

Indoor coffee table vegetable garden