Living Walls

How You Can Make Your Own Eco Friendly Living Walls

In an effort to become more environmentally friendly in their lives many people have begun building what is called a living wall, or sometimes a green wall, because when it's finished it will be completely green with plants from top to bottom. Of course, having all these plants on a wall is going to provide tons benefits, including the reduction of heat from the outside world, they are a great noise barrier, they absorb smog and turn it into oxygen, and if done right, can provide herbs, spices, and vegetables.  Let's take a look at all the benefits of these green walls and how you can build one economically.

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These Vertical Living Walls Bring Nature Into Your Home Or Yard

Green walls can be constructed either indoors or out, but there can be complications when built

indoors because they need light, water, and drainage in order to thrive and not ruin your indoor building materials.

If you're going to build one indoors it's best to put it next to a concrete or rock wall and then provide drainage on the floor to capture any water which can be piped to the outside to dissipate naturally. 

Once you have your concrete or rock wall in place, all you have to do is start planting plants and letting them grow.

There are several different styles of green walls, some are made of multiple different kinds of plants, while others only one plant, planted at the bottom. Many times people will plant a dozen or so varieties of herbs and spices that they enjoy cooking with in containers suspended at different locations along the wall.

The other philosophy is take a climbing vine, plant it near the bottom all along the wall, and allow it to climb up the wall on its own. If the vine doesn't naturally climb, you can attach a number of strings to the wall suspended on nails and then as the vine grows pull the lines up and wrap them around the strings every few days.

Building An Outside Living Wall Is Even Easier

If you were considering building a tall fence or concrete wall along one side of your property you can save the huge expense by just putting up a series of polls and stringing some inexpensive barbed wire on the polls for the plants to climb on. If you desire to create a barrier to block animals and people, a beautiful climbing rose will do just that.

On the other hand, you can also buy hundreds of small wire baskets and suspend them from the barb wire, fill them with moss, and plant hundreds of different flowers, herbs, spices and other ornamental plants. An excellent addition to this green wall is to add a drip irrigation system that will economically and ecologically provide each small hanging plant with just the right amount of water, every day, nearly effortlessly.

Getting started on your own living wall is fairly easy to do and there are plenty of ideas and photos online to help you out. There's no set plan that you need to follow, and you can combine the ideas of many different people when building your own Eco friendly wall.