5 Helpful Vertical Garden Design Tips
October 20, 2020Whether you have a lot of space in your yard for a garden or don’t have much sprawl to work with, a vertical garden can be a great addition to your landscaping. You can even make them work inside as an indoor vertical garden or a living wall! Here’s what you need to know and a few helpful vertical garden design tips to help inspire you for your own:
What is a Vertical Garden?
A vertical garden is a garden that grows upward on a support system instead of horizontally across the ground. Vertical gardens are popular outside as part of the landscaping, but indoor vertical gardens are growing in popularity as well. Usually, some sort of vertically suspended panel is used. But, a trellis, a fence, and even a repurposed wooden pallet can be used to support a vertical garden.
Vertical gardens can be freestanding structures or attached to a wall. Some vertical gardens use mounted or hanging containers while others use panels or trays. Some use soil and some are designed to grow plants using hydroponics. Hydroponics uses a mixture of an aqueous solvent and mineral nutrient solutions to grow plants in place of soil.
5 Helpful Vertical Garden Design Tips
Here are a few helpful vertical garden design tips to help you plan out yours:
1. Make Sure it’s in the Right Place
Whether your vertical garden will be outside or inside your home, it’s important to make sure it’s in the right place. As with plants in any garden, you’ll need to make sure you have the right amount of light or shade for optimal growth. This is also one of the useful indoor gardening tips to help your plants thrive inside.
At the same time, you’ll also need to make sure your vertical garden fits well in the place you’ve chosen. It will need to look great, function well, and allow for easy maintenance wherever you choose to place it. You’ll also need to make sure it won’t damage or cause issues to the surface it’s installed on or nearby areas.
2. Figure Out Effective Irrigation and Drainage
One of the best vertical garden design tips is to figure out effective irrigation and drainage ahead of time. Getting this wrong can cause a lot of damage over time, especially if your vertical garden is inside your home. In fact, ignoring proper irrigation and drainage or getting it wrong is one of the most common indoor vertical garden mistakes to avoid.
Whether your vertical garden will be outside or inside, it’s a good idea to look into waterproofing the wall or supporting structures involved. You may be able to waterproof the surface directly with a special finish or coating.
Depending on the structure and placement of your vertical garden, you may have other options as well to help protect surrounding surfaces from potential water damage long-term. Figuring out a good system for watering plants and allowing for drainage can go a long way in helping to mitigate risk and prevent future issues.
3. Pick the Right Plants and Containers
A lot of plants, especially climbing vines and ivies, succulents, tomatoes, and more, work well in vertical gardens. Although they are one of the fun summer landscaping ideas, not every type of plant will thrive in a vertical garden environment. Even if a plant will do well, it still may not be a good fit in terms of ongoing maintenance or growth.
Plants that tend to grow rapidly and need repotting frequently may not be the best fit for a vertical garden. If they don’t tend to get along with other plants in a shared container or they need space, they may not be a good plant choice for a vertical garden.
It’s also important for both design and function to choose the right containers for your vertical garden. If you’re using a trellis or a fence for climbing plants, you don’t need to worry much about containers. However, if you’re creating a more traditional vertical garden, your containers will make a big difference in the look of your garden, the maintenance, and the plants you choose.
4. Don’t Overload Your Containers
Part of picking the right plants and containers is considering the spacing of your plants. You don’t want to overload your containers. Many succulents will thrive in close quarters, but many plants don’t do well when they are crowded. Too many plants in a hanging container or on a structure can make ongoing maintenance time-consuming and difficult.
In many cases, it can also inhibit plant growth. On top of that, it can look messy, cluttered, and unplanned. In an indoor vertical garden, overcrowded containers can overwhelm a room, disrupt the flow, and cause additional issues, which is why it’s one of the mistakes to avoid with indoor vertical gardens.
5. Plan for Proper Long-Term Maintenance
One of the most useful vertical garden design tips is to plan for proper long-term maintenance in every aspect of your garden. Knowing how much time you have for maintenance and how much time you want to dedicate to maintaining a vertical garden can help inform you on the size, type of structure, the containers, the plants, the placement, and more.
You want to have a plan in place for how you’ll manage growing your vertical garden, tending individual plants, replacing or moving plants as needed, and more. In addition to irrigation and drainage, it’s a good idea to figure out ahead of time how you will handle soil management or the mineral solutions if you are using hydroponics.
These are a few helpful vertical garden design tips to help you with planning out what you want in yours. An outdoor vertical garden is one of the spring outdoor decor ideas and can add an interesting element to the exterior of your home.
Outdoor vertical gardens can help you save space while indoor vertical gardens can bring a unique nature feature into your home. If you’re on the fence about having one inside, you can weigh the pros and cons of indoor vertical gardens to figure out if it’s right for you.
If no amount of landscaping or remodeling is making your current house feel like home, it may be time to consider a custom home that is designed and built to your needs. If you’re ready to start bringing your dream home to life, contact Custom Home Group at 717-284-4090!