Vertical Garden Institute

Vertical gardens can be pricey

Philip Yates — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:21:29 +0000

Here’s a video showing the installation of a large commercial-grade, fully mature when planted, vertical garen in Diesel Village Headquarters in Breganze, Vicenza, Italy. Looks very spendy. Probably on the order of $200/ft (just a guess). Worth watching. You get what you pay for. At VGI, we are working to create methods of building low-cost vertical gardens.

The Dry Garden and Living Walls Confidential

Philip Yates — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 20:49:55 +0000

My link list is all that I’ve been adding to this website lately, and the list is getting a little unwieldy. So, I’m going to start including my links in posts, to make them a little more useful.

A Los Angles Times article critical of water-intensive vertical gardening in: “The Dry Garden: A skeptic’s view of vertical gardens, dated August 13, 2010. The author questions whether vertical gardens are appropriate in water-challenged, low humidity locales like Southern California. Not sure if the same critique applies in water-rich Oregon, but it does give pause . . .

The article mentions April Phillips, a Bay area landscape architect, which lead me to her summary of vertical gardening called “Living Walls Confidential”. I liked this summary a lot, including Ms. Phillips repeated comment that we really don’t know much about the long term viability of various materials or plants. Of course, that’s the point of the Vertical Garden Institute.

Vertical Gardening World Summary

Philip Yates — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:23:26 +0000

Stephanie Gautama, a grad student in the landscaping department of Cornell University, won the Dreer Award competition, and used the grant to travel the world studying various vertical horticultural building systems. One of the conditions of the grant is to give a lecture upon completion of the grant.

If you are interested on the latest in vertical gardening, the videos are worth watching. However, don’t take all her data as a final statement. For example, she says a Patrick Blanc style wall uses 16 liters/sq.meter/day. The Institute’s test walls use far less — between 4 and 8 liters per day on a warm day (and Blanc’s book uses a lower estimate, too). Also, her cost estimates, while probably accurate (between $150 and $200 per square foot) are ten times higher than Institute’s costs of experimental walls.

So, taking this with a grain of salt, here’s the April 5, 2010 Dreer Award Lecture, in two parts.

Part One – Green Walls

Part Two – Green Facades