By adding vertical gardening to your yard, you may grow it higher. You can add more plants to an already packed or small garden by growing them high or along walls. Even better, if you like learning about and exploring new growth strategies, vertical gardening makes use of the most recent approaches.
Plants are exhibited in a delightful and lasting way in vertical gardens, which bring them up to eye level. Use vertical gardening to hide ugly features such as a chain-link fence, compost pile, or pool pump and equipment. Utilize vertical gardening to screen a patio, swimming pool, or sitting area, or to build living walls in an outdoor area.
Conventional vertical gardening uses established techniques to raise plants from the earth to the sky. A trellis offers a means of supporting plants as they climb. Simple structures like a teepee made of three bamboo poles positioned at the top and fastened together might serve as trullises. Alternatively, a trellis could be an arch formed from rebar bent into concrete, wrought iron, or wood. A trellis can grow to a towering 10-foot height or be as small as three feet.
The stars of vertical garden design are unquestionably the vines. Plant shade-hungry climbing hydrangeas, hardy kiwis, or delicious fall clematis, or choose sun-loving perennial vines like wisteria, trumpet vine, or clematis, depending on your region. In a single growing season, annual vines emerge from the earth and climb upward, enveloping the supports. Many of species, including climbing nasturtium, cardinal creeper, morning glory, and moonflower, reliably emerge from seeds when planted in garden soil.
An additional choice for designing a vertical garden is to use living walls. Usually made from plastic trays divided into planting cells, these odd gardens are quite interesting. Plants can sink their roots in the thin soil created by the cells’ frequent outward slope. Shallow-rooted succulents can live happily in a standard 2-inch square cell, while 4-inch square cells can hold small annuals, perennials, or edible plants like alpine lettuces or strawberries. For a truly eye-catching conversation piece, think about creating a unique frame for your vertical garden out of wood that won’t rot.
The majority of experts on vertical walls advise providing air space between the planter and the wall. The majority of plastic trays include a hanging mechanism that allows the tray to be hung. To keep the tray away from the wall, add spacer blocks to the bottom and edges. To avoid the planters sitting directly on wood surfaces, construct a frame and utilize spacers before attaching living wall planters to concrete or stucco walls.
Another method to design a vertical garden is to use felt or plastic plant bags. These bags are available in various sizes to accommodate varying capacities of soil. Plants of any kind can be put in them, but make an effort to match the size of the plants to the bag (big plants in large bags, little plants in small ones).
It can be challenging to water vertical gardens, but it’s essential. If you want to put water directly into the soil, drip irrigation is probably the best option. Seek gravity-fed systems that have a naturally occurring flow rate. A vertical garden might be destroyed by a dry spell. As a result, be mindful of the water requirements of the plants, particularly as summer heat increases and the plants grow larger.
Consider plant size at all times, regardless of the vertical gardening approach you choose. To stop summer gusts from driving your vine—and your trellis—to the ground, anchor trellises deeply into the earth. Make sure the wall or fence is built to hold the weight of the planting frame, moist soil, and plants whenever you use living wall planters.
