Posts tagged 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
Biowall – Morristown Building Goes Green
Feb 17th
Biowall
The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation installed a biowall in their New Jersey building. The bio-wall is a 3 story (38 ft tall by 14 ft wide) vertical garden that uses a water and air permeable growing media. That allows the air to blow right by the roots which take the VOC’s right out of the air.
Multiple studies have been done showing the it’s actually the roots that take most Volatile Organic Compounds out of the air.. not the plant leaves. The roots are able to completely break down many of the VOC’s and even use some of the results of the process for food. A biowall can potentially replace a complete air exchange system if done correctly.
This biowall was integrated with the HVAC system so that the air is pulled through the plants and the growing media and into the HVAC system behind it which in turn circulates it through the building. So while most living walls use a passive system to clean the air by the plants naturally removing the CO2 and few VOC’s, this goes a step further and, through the roots of the plants, becomes extremely effective at removing a large amount of VOC’s.
An advantage to this system is that the air doesn’t need to be reheated or recooled as other ventilation systems do when they exchange air from outside… thereby saving energy. The air is simply returned through the room through the raised floor duct system.
The plants were placed into pockets from slits in the fabric. The plants are watered hydroponically with the water dripping down from the top, ending in a trouph, then getting pumped back up to the top again. There’s a biowall video below, and it’s definitely worth watching. You can see the planting in action there.
Biofilter wall
Biowall filter
Vertical Garden on Sunset Blvd
Feb 7th
Natural Mind is moving into the neighborhood and is installing a living wall on Sunset Blvd in Silver Lake. The process has been going on for many months to install the new salon, but it looks like the salon is going to be rewarded with a stunning store front.
Vertical garden starting sunset blvd
Green wall close up
Vertical garden pockets
You can see the pockets of dirt that are holding the plants in the wall. This is a great way to save money if you have the patience. You can see the wall isn’t yet lush and full with plants. The plants were likely started with either seeds or small plugs and the little pockets of dirt stuck in the felt allow them to grow up just like that. You can read more about this vertical garden here.
Greenwall Sunset Blvd
Living Walls up Close
Living Walls Beginning
Different types of Vertical Gardens Analyzed
Feb 5th
Tokyo Green Space came out with an interesting chart comparing different types of vertical gardens to one another. It’s easy to see a bunch of different vertical gardens and get overwhelmed, but his chart does a good job of breaking the options and features down into three categories: Corporate, Small Business and Residential with different size systems for each.
Vertical Gardens
