Life & Work

Not enough ground space? Invest in a vertical garden

garden

Lush plants on a wire mesh or wooden plank liven up an otherwise boring wall. PHOTO | FOTOSEARCH

Wall planters and creepers are the most common form of vertical gardens you will find around the country.

Sometimes you will find beautifully manicured flowers that make the wall they are growing on come alive. These are the perfect choice to add aesthetic appeal to your home especially if when you live in a small space or have a plain wall to spare.

The beauty of growing a vertical garden is that the available space is limitless and can keep growing to the heavens.

And it does not have to be outdoors as you can grow an indoor vertical garden that can serve either as a partition or central focal point of a room.

Contrary to popular belief, you can plant anything in your vertical garden from brightly coloured flowers to vegetables which you can use directly in your kitchen.

There are various ways to plant a vertical garden, not just the cliché of drilling holes in the ground and planting some creepers like vines to stop your walls from looking bland.

An important thing to consider when planning a vertical garden is the ideal location you want to have the garden. The amount of sunlight that falls on different parts of the wall or space and the length of time it shines will determine the kind of plants you can have in that garden.

There are some plants that require a lot of sun while others suffer from wilting leaves or develop patches from too much heat exposure.

Location

One way of finding out how the place is lit and ultimately informing the choice of plants to grow there, especially if you are a Do-It-Yourself enthusiast, is to spend a lot of time just studying your garden’s location.

You also need to consider your residency. Are you living in your own home or renting your current living space whose owner may not be so open to having any modifications?

There are many easily available items that you can use to structure your vertical garden. For instance, getting hold of an old crate or recycling an over-the-door shoe organiser that you no longer use.

You could even improvise with an old gunny bag that can be attached to the wall in the form of pockets that when filled with soil and manure can act as pots for your flowers or vegetables.

Another option could be to have the plants grow over wire mesh to create an artificial stand-alone wall.

The ideas do not stop there, as you can also attach gutters to the wall that can serve as a good bed in which to grow your plants.

In the same way, if you have several plastic bottles lying around the house after use, you could cut them in half and convert them into flower pots which can either be hang on the wire mesh or attached to a wall.

Green wall

If you are not fortunate enough to have a free wall where you can create a green wall, you can actually convert the small vegetable patch you planted to maximise on the yields.

All you have to do is plant some support frames to entice your veggies to grow tall. A number of vegetables are climbers. These include tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkin, peppers and melons which can make a beautiful mosaic once they fully blossom over the artificial wall.

Another thing to consider when planting a vertical garden on your wall is the actual height of the plant you are growing.
This is especially important when planting the trees at different levels so as to ensure that there is enough space to allow for adequate light to reach each plant.

Like your normal garden, you need to water and tend to the plants or vegetables you grow vertically by constantly pruning, weeding and feeding them.

To ensure their sustainability, you can connect the vertical garden to a fixed water storage point that will ensure each plant is irrigated when the main tap is switched on.

This will also take care of plants that you have grown in pots that are hard to reach.

Keeping a constant eye on the plants will help determine if they are becoming too heavy for their support frame in which case you will need to thin them or add additional support.