Green Vegetative Walls
Posted on Aug 11, 2008 - 04:58 PM
By: Adam Beazley
Green walls are a great choice for home owners and anyone that has a property that needs sprucing up or a degree of privacy. There is work involved with establishing a vegetative wall, but the end result is definitely worth it and this article will help you in building your own.
Planting a vegetative wall provides you and your home with many benefits that you can enjoy for years to come. Two of the biggest reasons for planting a live wall is for the benefits of privacy and relaxation, the aesthetic and environmental reasons are an added bonus. Vegetative walls can drastically reduce heat gain on sun facing walls during the summer and can help to insulate the same walls during the winter. The environmental benefits can help to reduce the home owners heating and cooling cost. The type of green wall that you decide to plant can just be an actual wall of hedges that forms into a thick border itself, or a growing wall that you train to grow on a fence or wall to create privacy.
If you are considering the addition of a green wall to your own home or property, there are several things you need to consider before deciding on the type of wall and planting it. Half of the decision needs to be based on the type of space and light you receive in your yard, the design of your green architecture must take into consideration the space and elements in order for your wall to thrive. If you have the room and desire for a green wall of bushes planting one will take time and constant care. On the other hand a live wall that is growing along an already established structure will need constant care to train.
One of the biggest benefits of a green wall is to add a degree of privacy or create a dividing wall around an area. Green walls help break up large areas, screen your yard from prying eyes, and divide up suburban yards that sometimes run into each other with no end in sight. Instead of creating more permanent, stone walls, living walls are able to give you the same privacy but with a softer feel to them. Green architecture is able to give you something beautiful to look at and looks more natural than a regular wall.
To make your own vegetative wall takes plenty of work and care, especially in the beginning. Green walls can be planted so that they grow into the wall that they are supposed to form, or can be planted mature so that the wall is nearly formed when you plant it. Before you begin planting it is important to decide the type and size of wall you will want and can fit into your space. A wall or trellis structure is erected and several plants are established directly into the wall or planted at its base so that they can grow to cover the wall. The other type of wall, that also happens to be more popular, is a green wall of hedges or trimmed bushes. This type of wall is easier to build and just requires that you plant the bushes in a row close to each other so that they will grow to form a barrier.
A big part of growing a green wall is the maintenance that is involved to keep it looking good and holding its desired form. Regular pruning, watering and fertilizing are needed to make sure that your wall stays healthy and grows till it reaches its mature size. Once there is enough of the wall established, you can then trim the hedge so that it is in the shape that you want your wall to be.
Green walls are a great choice for home owners and anyone that has a property that needs sprucing up or a degree of privacy. There is work involved with establishing a vegetative wall, but the end result is definitely worth it.
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Show/Hide Comments (1)
By Greg on 08/29/2008
This is kinda cool. We’ve been talking about green walls for awhile now, so it was fun to read this. Our neighbor’s kids shriek all day at a “I’m having burning pins stuck under my fingernails” level and a nice green wall would go a long way towards dampening that noise.
