PatioZen: Living Walls and Vertical Gardens

Lining the walls, fence areas, and trellises with plants can turn a drab space into a vertical garden soaring with life. These living walls have become more and more common, and there are several DIY and commercial designs going in every direction. These designs range from suspended pots and plant holders designed to be mounted on walls, to the creative use of old pallets, picture frames, furniture pieces, etc as plant holders.

This week’s PatioZen focuses on giving some ideas to gardeners looking to implement these sorts of Living Wall systems. We have mostly stuck to spaces and ideas achievable by amateurs, as opposed to professional garden designers.

Angled Plant Wall Along a Fence

In this simple, pleasant garden space, a living wall cascades down a fence in an angular, sweeping design. The stripes are highly effective at bringing movement to the patio area, and creating a dynamic environment. We also love the funky Adirondack meets robot chairs!

Two Wall Vertical Garden with Geometric Alignment

Here we have two living walls, one fully blossomed with apparently similar plants, and a second one geometrically arranged with plants that haven’t yet completely filled in the negative space. This design creates a very comfortable environment, perfect for a dip in the spa.

Boxed Garden Wall Along a Fence

The large boxed garden wall in this image is quite striking, especially with the lighting accents throughout. Horizontal stripes of similar plants provide a cohesive design, and the contrast of the greenery with the simple wood floor is beautiful.

Industrial Living Wall

The combination of a painted rebar plant frame and hand-tossed pottery creates are really fascinating garden wall in this image. The stick plants and hanging plants descending down the rebar frame provides a surprisingly-compelling waterfall-like look

Suspended Plants and Pendant Lights

This design creates a lot of verticality, and probably looks pretty cool on a slightly windy day. With hanging pots suspended on a wall, complimented by wicker pendant lights on black cords, a great of vertical interest is generated. Also, the play of light on this image is quite cool, with the upper area getting a lot of natural light, and the lower area illuminated more by the egg-shaped pendants.

Incredible Succulent Garden

There isn’t really much context to this amazing living wall, but it is quite impressive. By placing lots and lots and lots of small succulents in a wall grid space, this gardener has created an incredible succulent wall.

Simple Picture Frame and Potted Plants

This idea is quite simple, but very effective. Courtesy of Home Depot, simply suspend a picture frame, and inside of the frame, hang some potted plants. The potted plants become the art, and the frame encapsulates the image. It’s especially effective if you have vibrant plants like Magnoila or similar behind the potted plants, as shown in the image!

Picture Framed Vertical Garden

Here is another picture frame garden idea, this much more colorful, with more emphasis on the picture frame in contrast to the hanging plants. By using vibrant colors on the frames, like oranges and midnight blues the greenery of the interior plants really pops against the frame and the simple white wall behind. We also quite like the simple natural pine decking below.

Living Walls By the Fire Table

Here we have a three panel vertical garden with a creative design that flows like a flag blowing in the air, through the three panels blending into living walls. By carrying the pattern from one panel to the next as opposed to repeating the same design, or creating completely different designs, the whole system is enlivened.

Vertical Garden in Balcony Nook

This image shows what is possible on a small balcony space. With a couple of suspended wall pieces, anchored to a simple brick pattern, these gardeners created a lush, cozy space for plants where there otherwise would not have been any plant life. The addition of the planter boxes placed on the floor by the balcony rails creates a nice cohesion. With low furniture and pillows placed directly on the floor, this feels quite warm and cozy.