A flower-filled wall garden is an idea that's gaining ground and attracting more and more city dwellers. Imagine it colorful, varied and cheerful. Invite nature into your home and watch the flowers and vegetables grow, day after day. There's no better way to reconnect with the essentials!
All kinds of flowers, herbs, vines and plants lend themselves to vertical gardening. All formulas and styles are possible, as long as you take into account the wall's exposure to sun or shade.
You'll bring a little piece of paradise into your own home. No need for great expertise or a huge budget. However, you should know that such a garden requires a great deal of care and perseverance to produce magnificent results.
"Verdurizing" or flowering a wall
The limited space available on balconies and terraces has prompted some urban gardeners to use walls to grow gardens upwards. This "vertical gardening" is super-simple and gives great pleasure to its owner, especially as it transforms balconies and terraces into a pleasant extra room with a minimum of equipment.
Basic ingredients
- A wooden frame (pallets are perfect for this), a metal grid or simply nails or screws and dowels to hang your plantings.
- A set of pots, planters, bags or containers (recycled or new)
- A watering system (integrated or manual)
- Decorative elements and/or lighting
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You'll find countless tutorials on the Internet for creating a green wall from inexpensive euro-pallets. Or how to use halved PVC pipes or gutters to grow salads or a variety of vegetables and herbs.
But if you're not the DIY type, Garden ID offers a whole range of recycled plastic pots and planters, which you can either fix directly to the wall, or hang from a wooden support or any other type of structure.
It doesn't have to be complicated, and you don't have to embark on an expensive green wall project. With a little imagination and creativity, you can arrange your pots and planters to create a small work of art on your balcony or terrace.
Selecting suitable plants
First and foremost, choose plants with low roots. Then, depending on the exposure of your wall, you'll opt for plants that tolerate heat or, on the contrary, prefer shade.
The quickest and easiest way to dress up a wall is with climbing plants such as clematis, jasmine or climbing hydrangea. In no time at all, they'll cover even the most unsightly walls.
However, depending on your tastes and, above all, the time and space you have available, you can create more elaborate vertical gardens:
- A checkerboard of leaves, like a work of art, playing on the shapes and colors of the foliage, combining different types of ferns, hostas and helxine, for example.
- An impressionist painting playing on a profusion of colors, assorted or contrasting, by marrying different varieties of pelargoniums, geraniums or petunias.
- An arrangement of succulents. They don't need much water and will add an exotic touch to your wall.
- A vertical vegetable garden, where you can grow lettuces, peas, cherry tomatoes, strawberries and all kinds of herbs.
Don't forget that a vertical garden is more than just an eye-catcher: it also improves your environment, purifies the air and provides shelter and food for many insects.
Maintaining your wall garden
Wall gardens require more maintenance than ground gardens. In fact, like all potted plantings, you'll need to water them regularly. Plan to water every day in summer. As the soil is limited, plants dry out more quickly.
TIP: If you have the opportunity, integrate an automatic irrigation system into your wall layout, to ensure optimum development of your plants.
The maintenance of your wall garden depends essentially on the type of plants you choose. Certain climbers or lianas tend to invade everything. They therefore need regular pruning.
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