Vertical gardens

Avid gardeners don't seem to be deterred by much - bugs, too much sun, too much shade, not enough water - you name it, a true gardener will conquer it. In the city, gardeners have even figured out how to create a vertical garden where there is not enough horizontal space to accommodate one. And aside from being a cool project, a vertical garden is also a great way to disguise ugly wall space.

Today I stopped by the Shotwell Boutique in Union Square and was impressed by the extremely cool vertical garden in their entrance. It was installed by Flora Grubb, and she details the project on her blog.

You enter the store through the garden:

Which is just a bunch of lined pockets that are attached to the wall, filled with dirt and planted with various plants. The Shotwell garden has a mixture of houseplants, air plants, ferns, and ivy. The plants look great - really healthy and well established:

Vertical gardens can also be installed on the exterior of buildings, as is the case at Candystore, a boutique in the Mission:

This garden is a bit less dense and uses more succulents. Candystore is on the shady side of the block which may explain why it's not as densely grown in:

How to create your own vertical garden:

If you want to install your own, Sunset Magazine has a great tutorial showing how to make your own vertical garden using the wooly pockets that Flora Grubb used for Shotwell. Their example looks like this (photo courtesy of Thomas J. Story, Sunset Magazine):

Purchasing the materials:

The wooly pockets can be purchased online at both Flora Grubb and Velocity Art & Design. Flora Grubb sells the "wally one" and the "wally three" in the $40-$125 range. Velocity Art & Design sells a big variety in the same price range. Flora Grubb also holds vertical garden how-to workshops fairly regularly - dates can be found on their events page.

Even more information:

Tons of information about vertical gardens can also be found at Woolypocket.com.

I have a lot of work left to do on my horizontal garden, but once that's done I am going to explore the vertical options...