How does your vertical garden grow?
How does your vertical garden grow?
Make the most of your outdoor walls by covering them in plants. Here’s how.
Main image: RHS Vertigro by Adolfo Harrison
While growing greenery up your garden walls is nothing new, vertical gardening is being taken to a whole new level with the opportunity to create dramatic green spaces that are full of texture, colour and life. More importantly, they are a key way to help the environment, particularly in urban areas, with living walls improving air quality and biodiversity and reducing noise pollution.
At this summer’s RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival, Adolfo Harrison is designing RHS Vertigro, a vertical garden that feature large shrubs and trees, plants you wouldn’t typically see in a green wall, showing just how far you can take the concept, with the plants climbing to reach up towards the sun, while also creating interesting patterns of light and shade. He gave us the lowdown on how to create a green wall.
1
Invest in a good living wall system (if you can) – living walls shouldn’t become a maintenance burden, and the best way of ensuring this is to invest in a good living wall system that includes adequate planting pockets and either a built-in irrigation system or the space to install one. If buying an off the shelf product is cost prohibitive, build your own – you can create a modular felt pocket wall hanging with materials from the craft shop and DIY your own drip irrigation or hand water – just make sure you use waterproof backing material and include an air gap between your green wall and whatever vertical surface it’s fixed to – you don’t want to invite damp into your fencing or walls.
2
Location, location, location – Generally, you want to position your green wall somewhere there’s at least part shade during the day. This will mean less required watering and less stress on the plants in general. You also want to make sure that whatever surface you’re fixing your green wall to will be able to bear its weight – wet planting medium can be surprisingly heavy, so do make sure to check that your vertical surface is strong enough.
Green Wall at RHS Wisley / RHS Tim Sandall / RHS Neil Hepworth ‘The Lost Beauty’ garden from Clusius College
3
Follow a version of the ‘Thrillers, Spillers and Fillers’ ethos for your green wall planting – Choose a number of base evergreen ‘filler’ plants arranged in blocks or swathes to act as the textural background of your green wall. Thrillers and spillers can then be added in smaller numbers to add visual interest.
4
Don’t be afraid of using shrubs and trees! – The most exciting and visually appealing green walls have one thing in common: they all utilise shrubs and trees as part of their planting scheme. Adding drama and surprise, shrubs and trees form and contort to their new vertical environment, creating interesting shapes as they reach for the sun.
5
Consider making your green wall productive (if not partially) – If you’re limited on space but want to grow things you can eat, why not consider making your green wall an edible one? Herbs are a great evergreen base and a fantastic addition to any green wall, for example, but why not consider growing strawberries, lettuces, and other edible plants alongside your ornamentals.
RHS Vertigro will feature plants that are uncommon for vertical walls:
Hedera helix ‘Sagittifolia’ ambig. (ivy) – “Excellent plant for air particulate reduction.”
Dianthus deltoides (maiden pink) – “Forms an organic mound and has a long flowering season.”
Euphorbia × pasteirii (Pasteur spurge) – “A tidy exotic, whose growth leans towards the light.”
Acer palmatum ‘Linearilobum’ (Japanese maple) – “This plant will surprise people – a Japanese acer taken out of its normal context.”
Rubus lineatus (silky-leaved bramble) – “Has a striking leaf form, reaching away from a wall.”
RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival takes place 1-6 July
