The poet William Wordsworth once said, “A garden is a lovesome thing.” Well, he would have thought he had died and gone to heaven if he saw one of these babies! Yes, we are talking of vertical gardens. Mukesh Ambani has one, many five star deluxe hotels have them, Chennai’s Botanical Garden has the Green Wall, New Delhi’s Mughal Gardens has one and you can have one too.
Global gardening experts swear by vertical gardens which are essentially green patches that grow upwards and take a minimal amount of space, fit on patios, decks and even rooftops.
And it’s not as complex as it sounds. You can create a vertical garden with climbing plants, with the help of trellises or plants that will hang down from a high placed planter (call it a flowerpot). Other, slightly more time-consuming methods are tiered or raised garden beds, planters or shelves. This type of gardening is already becoming very popular in highly populated areas where space is limited. In return, the gardens offer aesthetic value, better indoor air quality, thermal insulation and the freedom to grow anything you want.
“With rising food prices, food shortages, genetically modified crops and the use of toxic pesticides and synthetic fertilisers, more and more people want to take control over what they eat. For folks living in tight spaces, creativity and using methods to maximise their growing space is required. There are so many options of growing vertically that most people are employing some form of this,” says Rachael Ross of Urban Garden Solutions, a Renton, USA, based organisation into urban gardening solutions.
For those who are keen to join the club, keep in mind that the idea is to have something inexpensive and easy to maintain. You can use existing walls, deck rails and overhangs for planters. You can also invest in a few trellises for the plants to climb. Even tiered, raised garden beds are relatively inexpensive, say experts. “Ample ventilation but not too much wind, direct sunlight in the morning or evening for two to three hours, water, timely maintenance and oodles of passion is what a gardener needs to have,” says Pradeep Barpande, owner, ELT India Enterprise, a Pune-based venture into living walls and sustainable light-weight roof garden systems. “Green walls cost anywhere between `1,700 and `2,200 depending on the type of mounting, size and plant cost,” he adds.
Catering currently to Pune, Mumbai, New Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru and Surat, Barpande gets requests for vertical gardens from all corners of the country.
And here’s a new format! The five foot, MonkeyPots Perfect Patio Planter, invented by Southern California entrepreneur Suzy Weast, is a vertical three-tiered planter that grows tomatoes and other large vegetables, while leaving room in the upper two planters to grow herbs, strawberries and other veggies.
One way of going green in your own backyard!