tattoos

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Living walls: wall gardens simplified.



I first saw this concept on a random walk in Sheffield.I was simply blown away on how absolutely stunning these gardens looked . Though the gardens were made in India since the late 90s green walls has just started to catch on as an effective,sustainable and stunning landscape feature. Wikipedia defines green walls asA green wall is a wall, either free-standing or part of a building, that is partially or completely covered with vegetation and, in some cases, soil or an inorganic growing medium. .
History:The first trials of its plant walls Patrick Blanc started in his own home ,later he created these wonders in some of his friends place and here the concept gained popularity. After many years of experimentation, the botanists found the optimal solution for buildings to be provided with a plant life. Its substrate-less design is so simple and successful. On the wall to be planted, a metal frame is attached and foam panels are installed, which in turn are covered with fleece?


I was sure this wouldn't work in Mumbai due to our temperatures/humidity and market conditions.So we at Vriksha nursery made minor modifications to this near perfect design to make it more suitable for the Indian markets.
Benefits :Benefits of Vertical garden
1)It helps in hiding less attractive portions of your landscape.
2)Growing plants in this manner generally avoid a lot of problems with pests and diseases, since many pests can't even reach the plants. Vertical gardens thus promise fewer insects, disease, mildew and fungus due to the additional sunshine and air circulation.
3)You can grow more plants with limited space.
4)Many materials used for vertical gardening can be used in ground-level gardening or raised beds, such as trellises and stakes.
5)Hanging baskets and grow bags are a great way to grow both flowers and vegetables in a small vertical space.
6)It will help in keeping your plant away from soil- borne diseases


How its done:here are some basic pointers you need to keep in mind while setting up the green wall:


1)Decide if the living wall is to be set up indoors or out.
2)Choose the appropriate plants
3)put up the mounting strips.
4)Set up your drainage and irrigation(drip preferably)
5)Choose your rooting media mixture carefully(make is as light as you can)
6)Carefully plant the plants on the panel and let it rest laterally for plants to be stable
7)keep panels vertically for a week before mounting
8)Arrange the lighting for the plants.
9)Mount frames corner to corner and make sure its mounted just right
10)Water and fertilize the plants.
There are other ways to do the green walls fabrications,growing bags etc but there is a big question mark when it comes to sustainability.Prices of this wall vary from about rs1200-1500 per sq ft depending on the quality of work done /plants/rooting medias and fertigation systems.A surprisingly large variety of plant species suitable for the vertical city gardens: small shrubs, perennials, ferns and mosses, including many known species that grow in the otherwise conventional bed in our gardens.For any queries/Additional info you need on living walls, feel free to drop me a line id be more than happy to help you with more details.

No comments:

Post a Comment

 

blogger templates | Blogger