If vertical gardens make dense living attractive does it matter if water consumption is reduced or increased?

This post is in response to the article on Vertical Gardens in the LA times written by Emily Green.  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/home_blog/2010/08/vertical-gardens-skeptic.html

and on the writers blog  http://bit.ly/9oJMWa.

Have you heard of the need to reduce food miles? Grow food closer to home? Are vertical gardens really using more water than a large sprawling suburbia where everyone plants into the ground?

Surely one of the best ways to reduce our impact on earth is to consolidate urban sprawl.

Dense living may sound horrible to those who like their open space but if its well designed medium density living can be great.

This is where a vertical garden strength comes into play.It allows for efficient use of space. It also allows gritty industrial sites to be ‘greened’ without the need to treat contaminated soil.

A vertical garden may use more water than a veg garden on the ground but it allows people to live in a more space efficient way. Can you be sure that in the long term your traditional ground plane vegy patch is the best way forward?

Lots of people have agreed with you but I feel they have not been given the complete energy consumption story.

Emily felt this last comment did not justify Woolly Pockets being considered a good design. And went on in her blog to say

‘So what? That does not make recycled plastic wall hangings the only alternative, or even a good one.’

Now this comment was just asking for a response surely? mmm no response to vertical gardens providing less water than the traditional horizontal planting bed  overall…maybe I am right?

OK so now we are down to the argument as to whether Woolly Pocket is a good product.

Emily – you do not like the product – fair enough – perhaps you should be fair to the designers and assess the product in its current design

your assessment has been made on the first protype (as shown in your photo)

surely a good journalist would interview the designer to get the most current up-to-date information?

anway, over and out and look forward to post 5 years when a proper assessment can be made

And guess what her response was? I offended her – but its perfectally fine for her to lay abuse into a designers product without all the up-to-date product information.

> I have deleted your last comment because of the cheapness of the  remark
> and you had made your points exhaustively. It was an opinion  piece and it
> was plain from the outset who I spoke to and didn’t. The  photo was taken
> last month. I’m sorry that you took offense. My  advice would be for you
> to construct your own argument rather than  mine my site with insults.

Oh dear Emily has now completely deleted my comments. Damn.  Its very annoying to be deleted. Fair enough its her blog but such a shame – we could have actually had a proper debate about this issue.

Now, interesting she choose to focus on my childish comments rather than rebut my arguments.  I am sorry. Come on, Emily. Speak to me.

Garden wall art can make the outdoors snug. And so can vertical gardens.

I have been applying all types of garden wall art to my communal outdoor area in the last 12 months.

The main ‘art’ is the vertical gardens. Everyone loves them and people often comment how the living walls make the space more cosy.

We have limited opportunity to make major changes to our garden therefore we usually have a cheapish ad-hoc approach . The other day I placed a garden clock on the shed wall. Instantly the outdoor space became just that little bit more –  snuggish.

The clock is approx A4 size and it works really well in such a large scale garden. It helps to break the space into more living room scale size.

Deer heads (and other species) adorn interior and garden walls. Retro hunting art?

Did you know the musty stag head hanging on  your family’s drawing room wall has become an icon of super chic? The strong shape creates a great graphic. Garden Beet stocks this item in the garden wall art department. Ours are made of cast iron.

The outdoor british brand Anorak use the icon on many of its outdoor products (outdoor table cloth shown below)

While a very cool hip bar in Angel, London, ‘Elk in the Woods’  has a real head on its wooden walls.

And there is a vertical garden in a bar in Seattle, The Hunter Gatherer, with a couple of taxidermy heads.

There is a trend but I support the fake type. Garden Beet’s fakes are only £24.99 http://www.gardenbeet.com/deer-head-wall.html

TV station ‘Help. Who in London does living walls for the home owner’. Slightly chuffed that the RHS recommended Garden Beet.

To be recommended for a TV lifestyle chat program by the RHS for living walls (following a living wall installation at Chelsea) makes me feel mildly excited. Garden Beet used Woolly Pockets at Chelsea. Woolly Pockets allow anyone to build their own living wall with ease.

Miguel Nelson the artist and inventor of Woolly Pockets is a pretty clever chappy and its his design thinking that is changing the garden opportunities available for those in urban areas.  Stay tuned.

Garden trellis is a home – for vertical gardens and Mr and Mrs – architects are in the garden

Architects are truly in the garden. Garden designers may only be colouring in the planting beds soon.

Architects Tham & Videgård Arkitekter have just designed the home owners into the garden trellis …  in ya go mr and mrs – with the snails, spiders and rootballs – can’t get much indoor outdoor living than this ? have the architects done it all ….

to me this project is redefining the garden and home – very funny

Experimenting with vertical gardens …which wall planter system allows living walls to thrive

I gave the Westfield green wall planting a hard time a couple of months ago – it seemed bland and not varied enough for the size of the wall. I need to slightly amend my criticism. I returned to the Westfield living wall today and the planting design looked more varied now the plants have grown and some species are in flower. Even so Anthropologie’s vertical garden is still the fairest vertical garden of all  – refer to this green wall article for further details.

Like the living wall at the O2 arena (photos here )  Westfield’s vertical garden has had some plant  failures. My husband insists that most people would not notice so I suppose overall the plants are doing OK. Providing a maintenance contract is set up between the supplier and the customer plant failure should not be overly feared. Vertical gardens are a new trend and the industry will continue to learn through trial and error. However if I was engaging one of these complicated  green wall systems I would want a tight maintenance contract to ensure I was not left with a brown green wall. This could be a costly exercise for the installation company.

Meanwhile my vertical garden made from Woolly Pockets are performing beautifully. I know I sell this system so it may seem I have a bias but I can honestly state that my plants are thriving. And I have treated these plants with cruelty. I have been  experimenting with various planting arrangements and in the process I have uprooted plants numerous times (and accidentally left them in the sun with the root system exposed for a couple of days) . The plants are growing, flowering and look very perky indeed. And they are easy to install.

Greening Sydney Road – 10 years later maybe – with wall planters?

Above image Julian Ruxworthy

Sydney Road in Melbourne, Australia is urban with little room for ‘greening’

Sydney Road’s local government (Moreland City Council) is big on greening.

In 2000 the problem with Sydney Road (according to its local government) was is its lack of growing space for ‘greenery’. There were overhead powerlines galore, underground lines for this and that, local traders compulsory car parking spaces and loads of verandahs resulting in limited room for tree canopy.  To overcome this problem there was a project called ‘Greening Sydney Road’.

The proposed design failed.

It involved mesh/trellis structures that moved within the footpath area, under the verandah and where possible above the pedestrian. The plants unfortunately failed to perform. I can only suggest that perhaps it was partly because the community wanted instant green and could not understand these metal climbing structures.  From what I can remember Moreland’s  planting palette would only allow indigenous plants. Crazy really. Do we really want habitat next to the butcher?

Anyway the local community revolted and the project was pulled.

The design concept was right but the detailed design required further resolution.  Metal mesh structures were perhaps not the right solution. Perhaps the concept design can be realised with Woolly Pocket wall planters. I know its 10 years late but I think Sydney Road may still be in need of a few more green spots.

Woolly Pocket’s Product Images are a Joy. Vertical gardens never looked so fab.

How fabulous are these planting arrangements? Woolly Pocket’s product photos are such joy. Totally textural, colourful and lush.  Order of appearance is as follows :

Woolly Wally One,

Woolly Wally Three;  and

Woolly Wally Five.

Photos taken by Kate Romero.

Anyway – Garden Beet is off to start planting some edibles in our vertical garden and hide giant colourful Easter eggs amongst our existing Woolly Pocket plantings. Happy Easter.

If you need some Woolly Pockets this Easter weekend and you live in the UK or Europe go to http://www.gardenbeet.com/green-wall-cost.html

Loop.pH are pushing at the edges of garden design in the UK. Vertical gardens knitted for wall-less spaces.

This post is for those convinced that garden design in the UK is lost in the 1920’s.

Check out these vertical gardens being built by London designers Loop.pH. This design team are using biological molecular structures to create a frame for climbing plants.  These are sublime gardening accessories –  innovative, beautiful and very useful.

Growing beans without a good support system is a total pain. The difficulty of securing plant supports when there is limited soil depth can be challenging. To overcome this problem  Loop.pH have developed a ‘knitted’ free-standing frame or wall. Deep soil is not required to stabilise the frame. Plants can happily climb and produce in planting bags of limited soil depth. This is great for those who are surrounded by concrete surfaces.

The system has been used on MetaboliCity (a project involved in transforming London’s unproductive east into urban farms) and is scheduled to be shown at London’s ecobuild in 2011.

According to Icon Magazine March 2010

its so easy and effective as a building system that the designers are going to open source the instructions so others can develop it

Loop.pH’s website is http://loop.ph/bin/view/Loop/WebHome

Green walls are not enough at Westfield Shopping Centre. Landscape architects are you designing?

I was pretty disappointed by the public landscape design of Westfield Shopping Centre – it is just another  bland outdoor space. But it has a green wall? Yes, that is interesting. And the green wall curves? Yes that is interesting. And the green wall incorporates seating at its base. Yes, nice concept but its not executed with much finesse.

Overall the landscape design is as ho – hum as the rest. All the £££ are spent on the green wall.

Green walls have been a fabulous design diversion device. But beware landscape architects the ability of a vertical garden to add  ‘WOW’ to a design is probably soon ending. It is still possible to get a fairly ordinary architectural or landscape project noticed if a green wall is incorporated into a highly visible exterior or interior wall. But I am sure  the green wall vertical garden hype technique will soon end.

Big corporate design firms who continue to churn out  mediocre design (often sub standard mediocre) will probably fade once again and continue to contribute very little to raising the design standard.

Can you paint a Woolly Pocket? Vertical garden design hackers. Jeepers already?

Should I sell my last cream Woolly Pockets?  Given the frenzy that has occurred on my website since Miguel Nelson (the designer of Woolly Pockets) featured on Martha Stewart’s chat show last Friday I am seriously begining to wonder whether they will become collectables.

A vertical garden designer rang me yesterday and was not happy when I informed him that the cream planting pocket was being discontinued and I only had a few left – and possibly not enough to fit his proposed design.

His walls are cream and he wanted to create the illusion that plants were growing from the walls. It was very important that the Woolly Pockets were not totally covered with plants. The cream colour of the pockets needed to remain visible.

Well if he could not get cream he declared he was going to paint the pockets! Good grief – they are felted fabric – he could not see a problem with that.

But the paint may stop the vertical garden’s root systems from breathing? He still was not concerned.

I am not endorsing painting the Woolly Pockets but I did love the way this guy was hacking at the design.

Brown and Black are great and work well with many designs. New colours are also proposed. Nevertheless I hope the Woolly Pocket guys bring the cream back onto the market.

Felted recycled plastic bottles create vertical gardens and green walls: Woolly Pockets Wall Planter

Woolly pockets are made from a felted type fabric that is woven from recycled plastic bottles. The Woolly Pockets enable vertical gardens (also referred to as green walls or living walls) to be created indoors and outdoors.

The fabric allows a plant’s root system to breathe which in turn allows the root system to be air-pruned rather than becoming pot bound. They are a pretty clever wall planter.

Plus they allow people to grow plants on any indoor wall. The indoor model is lined thereby preventing water from gushing onto the shag pile carpet.

But how does that work?

Well, the weave of the lining allows air and water to pass but it slows the movement of the water. If water does start to move through the felted fabric you just simply dab with a towel. You are unlikely to over water again.

Garden Beet is based in London UK and ships to most places that require an easy to build green wall.

Check out our vertical garden pages for more detail and  BUY at Garden Beet.

Bad design green screen device. Are vertical gardens and living walls too green. Or is it just a representational issue?

I am waiting for green wall designs to become more multi functioned and multi surfaced.

Surely we don’t just want acres of vertical greenery and nothing else? Should the walls do more? Perhaps green walls are being used to screen bad design?

Many of the illustrations being shown to represent this design approach seem to have way too much green . But then again computer aided design images are never good at representing detail.  So maybe its just a representational issue. I hope so. Cause everything is looking a bit too green and hairy for my design sensibilities.

Images above are from Vegi.tecture website . This is a great resource for keeping up to date on the convergence of buildings and landscape.

Green Wall, Living Wall What Do You See? I see Garden Accessories Looking at Me?

‘Lost in Paris’   by architects  R+Sei (n)  2008.

OK so the solid single species plant is a tad boring for the plant enthusiast but the green wall’s jewels are far from boring. To date most of the green walls I have seen are comprised of plants. But on this domestic green wall somewhere in Paris, the living wall (or vertical gardens) concept is slightly different.

Here the watering mechanism is turned into art and the green wall is as much about the plants as the technology of growing plants vertically. From what I can establish rainwater is collected by the glass berries and fed back into the hydroponic system that lies behind the green wall. These glass sculptures are not intended to be seen as mere garden accessories but a core mechanism to the survival of the green wall (at least that is my assessment – I may be wrong?).

Envionmentally Friendly Christmas Gift for the Eco Savvy Consumer and Gardeners alike- Woolly Wally Pockets Vertical Garden System

Woolly Wally Pockets, the great vertical garden system, are available in the UK through Garden Beet offering an alternative environmentally friendly Christmas gift idea for the eco savvy consumer and gardeners alike.

Made of recycled plastic bottles, the vertical garden pockets allow plants to be grown all year round, inside or outside, on walls or fences. Vertical gardens assist with the thermal properties of walls and also help to absorb noise. The unique planter pocket design allows the roots of the plants to breathe, thereby promoting healthy plant growth.

The manufacturer is committed to sound environmental practices and the Woolly Wally Pockets have been designed to provide an alternative option for growing plants in urban areas where space may be limited.

Felicity Waters, Landscape Architect and owner of Garden Beet, explains:

“Not only are the Woolly Pockets made from recycled plastic which is great when trying to be environmentally friendly, but they also allow people to grow their own herbs and vegetables at home where space may be limited to say a balcony, or a small courtyard, potentially helping those who are trying to reduce their carbon footprints too.”

The vertical garden pockets will fit any sized wall and come in three colours and three sizes.

Patrick Blanc the French botanist and famous designer is often referred to as the founder of the vertical garden concept and his spectacular work is certainly having an influence on how garden designers and interior designers are approaching the treatment of vertical spaces. One of the latest indoor vertical gardens to be constructed in London can be found at Anthropologie, Regent Street, London.

As an introductory offer Garden Beet is offering 10% off all Woolly Wally Pocket purchases made before the 18th December. Please visit the Garden Beet website for further details and for information on this special offer.

(PRWeb UK/PRWEB ) November 21, 2009

Flora Grubs Green Wall

Vertical Gardens, Flora Grubb and Thigmotropism

Thanks to Woolly Wally Pockets I am now aware of garden designer Flora Grub in San Franscisco (she also stocks the Wally Pockets). Flora Grubb has some amazing vertical garden installations (called ‘thigmotropes’) in her store. She creates them with Kevin Smith. They are artful arrangements of air plants known as Tillandsias.  I think they are mounted to what looks like corten steel (pre-rusted steel). Wow. check them out

They are known as air plants, because they don’t need soil to grow. They are epiphytic and absorb water and nutrients through their leaves. They do have roots, but these are used only for anchoring to other plants or structures. Although tillandsias often grow on other plants, they are not parasitic, they depend on the host only for support.

 Very beautiful indeed

A vertical gardens using airplants

Vertical Gardening

There is a new product on the block that should delight many, Woolly Wally Pockets.  The Wally Pockets will enable you to create a living wall within a couple of hours. If you are interested in vertical gardening  and would like a product to help you please refer to my website www.gardenbeet.com. If you would like to hear my very brief summary of the current debate surrounding green walls read below.

Living walls are also known as green walls and are often associated with sustainable living. Vertical walls can be used to grow vegetables as well as provide habitat for wildlife. Great for city living and adding that particular wow factor to your warehouse/loft/apartment. They can also improve insulation properties of walls and absorb noise.

Nevertheless  there are  concerns with the eco-credentials of vertical gardens given the water and maintenance required, particularly in large public spaces. Yes, vertical gardens  need watering. The amount of watering, however, can be reduced by selecting  the correct plants, ensuring the soil has good water retention properties (if you using soil as a growing medium) and recycling water. Harvesting rain water or grey water would also be grand.

Vertical gardens are not the answer for every site. Hard walls serve a purpose . Green walls are not going to save us from the ‘evils of modernity’ but when used appropriately they can contribute positively to our environment.

An article on Apartment Therapy alerted me  to the death of the 1st green wall (supposedly) in Britain, at Paradise Park Children’s Centre, Islington.    http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/outdoor/vertical-garden-a-green-wall-in-islington-architects-journal-093944 It was originally built in  2006 and looked great when I first saw it during the London Design Festival in about the same year.

It is suggested that its death  is either due to lack of maintenance or technical design issues  http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/5207086.article. It’s probably both.

As an Australian living in the  UK I am always amazed at how much public money is spent on maintenance of public spaces in this country. What you prune trees? What you hedge plants. Geeze. So if London can’t get the maintenance right on a vertical garden on a public building, can Australia?  I would love to hear more about the politics of the  maintenanace behind this project…anyone?.

I note that architects/landscape architects are concerned that vertical gardening is a new fad. A way of getting eco-credentials when they are not really justified. There is probably some just argument in all this, but it does not make the technique  invalid. And yes its been around longer than the 2009 Chelsea Show and yes it requires maintenance and it requires watering but there is still merit in its application. It’s just one planting or building technique of many. Suitable for some sites and not others. No different to anything else really.

Good on you Islington landscape architects/ designers for pushing it through all the political hoops.