Love plants but don’t have much room?
Go Vertical
Some gardens are designed to be temporary partitions, or screens, while others can moveable (on rollers) to act as room dividers, or roll indoors to avoid a frost threatening your tender plants.
Other structures are permanent such as stone, brick, or timbers designed to allow plants that will enhance the setting over years with size, fruit, unique form, or color. An online search of vertical gardening will yield a barrel load of ideas and products to buy and/or build.
Would you like to have plants or even a small garden, but your living situation has little space for that plot of earth typically used?
Good news, there are alternatives, if not opportunities.
In recent years, the popularity of small-space gardening has sprouted a variety of structures that accommodate the desire to be a gardener in a limited area. Vertical gardens are truly living wall structures with either pockets, shelves, troughs, or hooks that hold and secure plants.
What kind of plants you can use in a Vertical Garden?
As long as the basic needs of the plant are met: light, water, fertility, space, and support — the possibilities are endless.
Capitalizing on the recent craze for succulents – they are an ideal selection for your wall. They require limited care and only about 4 hours of direct light a day.
Vertical gardens can produce foliage and flower color to brighten up any space. Depending on what you plant, they can also yield vegetables, berries, and other fruit. These gardens will generally spark a conversation as you have created an unlikely type of garden – a vertical garden, in an uncommon space – up a wall.
Having home-grown vegetables is also a reality. With space being limited, plants that remain relatively small or in a bunch such as lettuce, kale, endive, and some herbs work well as they typically do not need much support for their size and weight.
-Rob McCartney, Horticulturist
