Have you heard of vertical gardening? This umbrella term encompasses various traditional and innovative methods of integrating plants into facades and ornaments (walls, trellises, pergolas etc.) both outside and inside of buildings. One example is the spectacular Vertical Forest in Milan, as well as other metropolitan reforestation projects.
You may already have heard of urban farming, which is based on shared vegetable patches and gardens. Even the home vegetable patch is a form of urban agriculture, defined as the cultivation of plants and animals for food within cities and suburbs. The characteristics of your home vegetable patch will depend on the context: if you have a larger garden then it can be at least a mini-patch or bigger; if your garden is small or you don't have one at all, then it could be a vertical balcony garden. In this article we will see how to create a DIY vertical garden and which plants are best suited to being grown vertically.
Growing a vertical balcony garden
A vertical balcony garden is a form of vertical farming, a variation of urban agriculture that consists of growing crops in vertically stacked layers. It exploits overhead space rather than horizontal area, typically thanks to sophisticated systems such as hydroponic cultivation. However, when it comes to home gardening and specifically growing your own food, there are simplified systems for vertical growing that share the same principles as the most technologically advanced methods, that is, cultivating on multiple levels and out of the ground. In contrast to a garden vegetable patch, with a vertical garden you don’t grow directly in-ground or, to use the technical term, in the open field.
Vertical vegetable patches don’t belong solely on balconies, though. You can introduce them into the garden too, perhaps to exploit the walls of your house that are well exposed to sunlight – but not in the sun all day – and sheltered from the wind, or to make them more pleasing on the eye, or simply because you’ve run out of space in your vegetable patch.
Create a home-made vertical garden
Aside from the plants themselves, what do you need to create a home-made vertical garden? Basically you just need some containers for the substrate into which you will transplant or sow the plants. All-purpose potting soil makes a suitable substrate, with a drainage layer of expanded clay underneath it. Whether they are new, used or recycled, the containers must have drainage holes so that excess water can drain away and not stagnate, which would cause the roots to rot.
For the containers of your vertical balcony garden, you can:
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Purchase specific modules that you fix to the wall or stack to form a self-supporting structure (you can find both types in a variety of materials and shapes).
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Place standard plant pots with their saucers on shelves screwed to the wall or on a shelving unit; alternatively you can hang them from the underside of the balcony above using ropes or chains, or place them in planters attached to the terrace railing, thereby also creating a screen to shield from prying eyes. In winter you can transform the shelving system of your vertical garden by suitably protecting it and turning it a DIY balcony greenhouse to preserve the plants from the cold.
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Make holes in PVC pipes that you then use to house potting soil and plants, turning them into freestanding vertical planters; you can also take advantage of PVC guttering and drainpipes in a similar way, by fastening them to the wall.
Build a vertical garden with pallets
You can even create your vertical balcony garden using pallets: new or salvaged pallets make a versatile resource. If you decide to reuse old pallets, make sure they are sturdy and the wood healthy, because they will need to support the considerable weight of the substrate and plants. We recommend cleaning them with at least a high-pressure washer or hosepipe jet (even better would be to brush them with a solution of hot water and bleach, rinse them off and let them dry).
The pallet must be securely fixed to the wall, with the top deck boards (i.e. those that originally formed the pallet's load surface) facing the wall. The cavities formed between the blocks at each end and the bottom deck boards, i.e. those which would originally have formed the underside of the pallet, will serve as planters for the vegetables.
Here's how to transform a pallet into a planter unit for your DIY vertical garden:
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Prepare the pallet by sanding it with sandpaper or an electric sander, then protect it by brushing with water-based wood stain. If you prefer a touch of colour rather than a natural wood look, you can coat it with paint (also water-based).
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Screw boards to the lower side of each pair of blocks in order to close up the bottom of the planters.
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Place potted plants in the planters as if they were shelves, or fill the planters with potting soil (without expanded clay), then plan the arrangement of the seedlings – taking into account sunlight requirements, minimum spacing, companion planting, etc. – and finally transplant them.
As an alternative to planters with a closed bottom, you can use thick non-woven fabric to create "troughs" for the potting soil. Insert a rectangle of fabric into each container, securing it with staples along the top edge and trimming with scissors if it overhangs; finally, fill the troughs with soil and transplant the seedlings into them. You can substitute non-woven fabric with sturdy plastic waterproof sheeting, as long as you perforate it at the bottom to let water drain out.
The pallet planters are small, so water your vertical garden little but often, especially when the weather gets very hot: to work out when watering is needed, simply check whether the soil is dry. A drip irrigation kit might be a more practical solution than a watering can.
You can hang multiple vertical pallet planters depending on your available wall space. If you have a garden, you might like to build a freestanding variant of the pallet planter unit:
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from the bottom side of a pallet, dismantle a pair of blocks along with their connecting lead board: what remains of the pallet will form the "backboard” of your DIY vertical planter unit.
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Use boards removed from other pallets to assemble a large container at the base of the backboard, to grow vegetables in whilst also adding stability to the structure.
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Close up the bottom of the backboard planters and that of the base container using boards removed from other pallets. On the underside of the base container you can create a stand using pairs of blocks and their connecting lead board.
To quickly dismantle a pallet or shorten a board to the desired size, you can use a hacksaw, reciprocating saw or even a chainsaw (always wear appropriate protective clothing when using these tools).
If you have a tree trunk, a large enough work space and a planking guide to mount the chainsaw onto, you can cut wooden planks to build your vertical garden with. In the garden and in the countryside, a great solution for transporting pallets, logs and everything else you need is a transporter.
Which plants can be grown vertically
In your vertical balcony garden you can grow climbing species the traditional way – that is, in pots – supported by simple stakes or other means (trellis, pergola posts, etc.). There are various climbing vegetables that you can keep on a terrace, including cucumbers, kidney beans and French beans, as well as tomatoes, courgettes and pumpkins. With the same system you can also grow fruit plants such as melons, raspberries and other shrubs that produce berries, as well as kiwifruit and table grape vines. You can also opt for dwarf varieties of pear, peach, plum etc. The important thing is that the climbing plants and dwarf plants do not overshadow other crops as they extend upwards.
In addition to cultivating plants that naturally grow tall, you can arrange containers vertically to grow plants that thrive in minimal soil and naturally stay small. These mainly include all leafy vegetables (salads, beets, spinach...), as well as radishes, chillies, everbearing strawberry varieties, and aromatic herbs.
If you are in any doubt as to how successful your vertical garden will turn out, growing aromatic herbs is a fairly simple way to dip your toe in the water: you can plant basil, mint, oregano, parsley and rosemary (which need to be pruned often and transferred to larger, individual pots after a few years) and so on. Bear in mind that some herbs – including basil, mint and rosemary – also act as mosquito repellents, making them useful in summer if you want to sit out on the terrace without unwanted guests.
You can sow the plants directly in your vertical balcony garden, or you can transplant seedlings bought from a nursery or grown in a seedbed. Direct sowing is advisable for root vegetables including radishes, and legumes such as beans, whereas transplanting is suitable for leaf vegetables and fruit plants (tomatoes, cucumbers, etc.).
If you have a knack for DIY, here are some ideas for your garden:
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Create borders for plant beds, a DIY path or an inexpensive fence.
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Build a wooden bench or a rustic planter from a log.
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Create a wooden gazebo and an artificial pond for your relaxation space.
