Vertical Garden Kits

Vertical gardens allow you to grow a lot in a little space — and add new looks to container gardens and walls.

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Filed under: Container Gardening

Vertical gardening adds a new dimension to the landscape. Not only does a vertical garden "bed" look quite interesting in contrast with the traditional horizontal garden bed, but it's also an alternative gardening method that works for people who have difficulty bending or stooping. Indoors, it provides lots of growing area within a very small footprint.

One vertical garden kit available today is a wall panel with individual planting cells. When mounted to an indoor or outdoor wall, the planting cells slant downward to hold soil and plants in place. The roots grow to firmly set the plant in place, and the plants grow upward and outward.

Here are a few tips that will help ensure success with this vertical growing system:

Use only shallow-rooted plants, because the planting cells are only a couple of inches deep and provide limited growing space.

Consider plant compatibility for care and cultivation requirements. Creeping thyme, lettuce and violas all prefer evenly moist soil, but you wouldn't want to mix lavender with them, as it likes to dry out between waterings.

For container gardens, use a good-quality potting soil. This helps plants to establish quickly if they have the right nutrients from the start.

For indoor vertical gardens, consider mounting an indoor grow light overhead.

Prior to mounting the vertical garden onto a wall, consider how heavy the wall-mounted system will ultimately be. Once you add the soil and plant material and then water it all in, it can weigh at least 30 pounds, depending on the size of the unit. So when you install it, prepare the wall so that it can bear the increased weight by building a supporting framework for the system or mounting it with anchor bolts.

To plant, place about an inch of well-packed soil into each planting cell. Place a plant's root ball into each cell and firmly pack soil all the way around it so that each plant will remain upright.

Mix textures, colors, varieties and whatever else you desire. For easy-to-grow crops like lettuce, you might even want to start it from seed and swap out a couple of units every so often.

Once the plants have been planted, give them a good watering; this will also help to wash the soil off the leaves and allow the soil to settle. You might prefer to plant your vertical garden horizontally and give the plants a few days to acclimate to their new environment. Once the soil has settled, enlist the help of a friend to mount the planted vertical garden onto the wall.

Don't water the garden until after it has been mounted to help reduce the amount of weight to be lifted and the mess that could be made from a dripping wall mount. Place a water basin underneath the wall unit to catch the water. Over time, the plants will grow and create a living piece of art on the wall.