“Why would I want to install a vertical garden?” I hear you say? Well let me tell you a few good reasons…

Being surrounded by indoor plants has certainly changed the way I feel about our home. Prior to marrying my gorgeous husband, I probably had only a handful of indoor plants that my mum would have given me and what I didn’t kill made an appearance around the house! Back then I would have had maybe 5 plants and I can say we easily have over 100+ plants scattered throughout our home now (now that I have someone who happily waters them all! lol).

So reason #1 – they really do make a house feel more like a home

As a very visual person I am always drawn to inspiring spaces, inside and outside. The garden has always been my favourite domain as soon as I owned a home, to me it felt manageable. Indoor plants were another story!! My mother had an amazing green thumb (quite enviable actually!). She was always in the garden or tending to her plants around the house. So when I met my husband, they hit it off! Often outside chatting about which plants they had propagated and collected over the past few weeks. Mum would buy hubby a plant he’d been looking for and he would do the same for her! (To say my mum wasn’t chuffed at my partner selection was an understatement!)

Reason #2 – making the most of empty space that makes it inviting & interesting

So fast forward a few years and we decided to extend our house. The original house was a typical 50’s abode with a very small footprint but large yard. We decided to expand the living area and add a master bedroom. This meant adding a rather large wall to separate the two spaces. Our existing house had such small walls, whereas this new space was going to have 4.5m high ceilings with a wall width of 7m. What to do with all this wall space?? Hubby is an accomplished orchid grower and with the stunning flowers we thought it would make the perfect location for an orchid wall.

As soon as the plans were drawn up we knew we would have a really large wall to play with. As my husband is an avid orchid grower we thought it would be a great place to display orchids. However, due to the location, lack of bright enough light, and cooler temperature it has evolved into a rather green wall instead. But I love it more. The original living/dining space was very sparse and bare and over time we have ‘greened’ it up with pot plants every where as well as some of the runner indoor plants have gone slightly crazy and now grow everywhere.

Reason #3 – More oxygen for your home

Having a green wall really does liven up the room not just with colour but also more oxygen. We love that the plants are always growing & changing (as we like to mix it up). For the most part we keep it generally the same but some plants need to be moved for light or watering reasons. We have had a pot fall from the top as it was top heavy (scared me to death while I was asleep!).

Here are the original plans I drew up. The above photo is from a Real Living Magazine (sorry, not sure what issue it was as I’d pulled the page out!) but as you can see I took the concept of the little shelves and turned them into our own design. It’s a very different layout to the one in the mag but I do love it. We had to plan the shelves and add extra noggins into the framework before we plastered the walls. Once plastered clever hubby used the measurements as well as a stud finder to locate the timber. We sourced invisible shelving brackets which basically sat inside the timber shelf and the noggin or framework & let me tell you those shelves are NEVER coming out!

Overall, we love the look and feel that the wall gives us and yes, it does require dusting somewhat regularly. I’m just glad I don’t have to do all the watering!!