Angkor Temples, Cambodia

Angkor Temples, Cambodia

OF COURSE, NOT EVERY single species of plant matter is appropriate for inclusion in a green wall. Since there is little or no soil, only perennial plants that have a shallow root base should be installed in a wall. For outdoor green walls, drought-resistant plants should be used, since they can weather climactic extremes. For indoor green walls, tropical plants should be used, since they are accustomed to balmy twenty-plus Celsius degree temperatures all day long. But that still leaves us with a wide variety of plant families to choose from. The main factors that affect which will be included are budget and exposure to natural and artificial sources of light; for outdoor walls, micro-climactic factors are obviously important considerations, as well. Here below are photos of a few of the multitude of species that can be utilized in a green wall:

outdoor green wall plant possibilities

indoor green wall plant possibilities

WELL, AT GREEN APPLE, we mean to practice what we preach. So we are officially declaring our intentions to launch this new venture, offering green wall design and build services for our clients. And to put our money where our mouths are, starting today we are constructing a green wall in our new offices here in North York! On a personal level, I’ll be very happy to have some natural plants to look at, especially as fall sets in and it starts to get colder outside. With something lovely to look at, it may help me get my butt out of bed and out to work earlier than otherwise. And least that’s what all the stats say, that green walls decrease employee absenteeism and increase worker productivity! And I have a hunch that in the wake of this decision, more meetings are going to take place here, since clients and suppliers are going to want to come see the green wall for themselves!

WE MAY BE THE LATEST, but we certainly aren’t the first in the GTA to erect a green wall. In the meantime, you might want to check out two Toronto locations with vertical gardens, both built back in 2004: the Guelph Humber Building and the Robertson Building. The Guelph Humber Building is part of the Humber College North Campus in the west end at Finch and Highway 27, and can be reached by TTC from Finch Station with a 36B bus, or from Wilson Station on either 96A, 96B, or 96D. And the Robertson Building is located in downtown Toronto at 215 Spadina Avenue, between Dundas and Queen Streets; just take a 510 Spadina streetcar southbound from Spadina Station. We applaud these pioneers, soon to be peers, and look forward to the day when green walls will be so commonplace that they will barely require mentioning!

Guelph Humber Building, Toronto

Robertson Building, Toronto

I’LL END THIS MISSIVE about green walls with some thoughts for the future. It seems almost silly to discuss extreme possibilities when we’re just getting started with walls. But it’s also inspiring to contemplate where the leaders in the field are taking this technology. Patrick Blanc has pointed out that there are many examples in nature of plants actually growing downward from on high, and so he designed a human-made green ceiling! Check it out below. And outside the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, artist Jeff Koons installed a huge puppy dog that is covered in every crevice with vegetation, a real 3-D green experience. I think we’ll stick to the Y-axis for the time being, but continue to be invigorated by the prospects of putting the jungle back into concrete jungle!

Espace EDF Electra, Paris

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao

THE TECHNOLOGY IS ACTUALLY not that complex, the systems aren’t overly intricate, surprisingly. We have the know-how, and we have the desire. One of the reasons that Green Apple is excited to offer this new service is because out here in Eastern Canada, we can only work as landscapers for eight months a year, at most. Some of us don’t mind hibernating for the winter, but others of us would prefer to have income all year round to support our growing families. And installing indoor green walls is something that we can definitely do in even the coldest of winters.

BUT THE MAIN REASON that we’re so gung-ho for green walls is that it’s an ecological leap towards truly green architecture. There’s no reason why some of the plants that you grow indoors can’t be edible or medicinal; lettuce, beets, radishes and carrots have already been successfully grown on indoor green walls in the Greater Toronto Area. So in addition to creating a pleasant indoor environment for you and your family, what we want to do even more is construct a wall system that sustains you with fresh vegetables all winter long.

DOES THIS SOUND A LITTLE NUTTY? Farms are for growing food, er, right? Well, the cost of food is rising all the time, and as oil and other fossil fuels pass their peak, it’s only going to get more expensive, especially for organic. And there’s something very special about growing close to home, knowing exactly where your calories are coming from, watching those little tomatoes grow. Impress your friends with herbs that they can pick themselves instead of store-bought, pre-packaged with way too much plastic, shipped from some other part of the planet. But the best reason of all is that local just tastes better!

OKAY, SO GROW CLOSE to home. Build a greenhouse beside the house, get a cold-frame going. But inside the actual house? Yes! We didn’t come up with this idea, it’s the brainchild of brilliant eco-architect Michael Reynolds. For almost forty years, he has been designing and building radically sustainable homes in the southwestern United States and around the world. The recent documentary Garbage Warrior documents his stories and struggles to spread the gospel of the Earthship, his ultra-ecological benchmark for healthy shelter.

THE CONCEPT IS PRETTY BASIC: ensure that the house is aligned east-to-west, oriented towards the southern sun with lots of windows. Make the walls incredibly thick, and build them out of massive materials, like stone and earth-bricks. Use materials that ordinarily end up in landfills and scrap heaps, embed them into the walls of the structure. In the winter, the sun is low on the horizon, so light and heat pass through the south-facing glass and the energy is absorbed by the heavy earthen walls, heating the home for free. In the summer, the sun is high on the horizon, so it doesn’t shine inside the house, and the thick walls keep it cool.

AS YOU CAN SEE FROM these photographs downloaded from the website earthship.net, the indoor plants find this arrangement more than satisfactory. Even tropical plants thrive in these warm indoor conditions. True, in a classic earthship, the runoff grey water from the kitchen sink, which is full of nutritious organic material, is filtered and then fed into the beds, and that also accounts for some of their tremendous growth. Without a water recycling system, the plants would need mineral supplements. And that’s what Patrick Blanc does, he drip-feeds his vertical creations mineral-rich H2O.

WOULD YOU LOOK AT these pictures! It’s absolutely amazing to think that bananas can grow this far north. And while most of these earthships are constructed south of the border, a fair number of them have been built in northern climates such as ours. Note the snow-covered earthship below.  Back in 2003, I visited an earthship a couple of hours north of Toronto, in late fall. And I can personally vouch for the fact that the technology works north of the forty-ninth parallel. I took the bottom-left-hand photo in an earthship in Bancroft, Ontario — that’s me in the middle on the bottom-right-hand photo.

GREEN APPLE IS COMMITTED to introducing new green technologies and creating new green business opportunities. We hope that these beautiful photographs of indoor arboretums help convince you to consider building a green wall in your own home, here in the 4-1-6. If earthships sound sort of interesting, and you would like to learn more, check out an architectural study of earthships that I co-authored in 2003. And if you’d like to see more photos of the Earthship communities in Taos, New Mexico, check out a photo essay of earthships that I produced in the spring of 2006.

Patrick Blanc

IN THE WILD, plants grow on vertical surfaces. Whenever water is available all year long, as in tropical forests or in temperate mountain forests, plants can grow on rocks, tree trunks and soil-less slopes. In Malaysia, for instance, out of the 8,000 known species, about 2,500 are growing without any soil. Even in temperate parts of the world, many plants are growing on cliffs, cave entrances, or fallen rocks. Many Berberis, Spirea and Cotoneaster species grow in such very steep places. Their naturally curved branches indicate that they originate from naturally steep biotopes and not from flat areas like the gardens where people usually grow them. Thus, as seen from nature, it is possible for plants to grow on nearly soil-less vertical surfaces as long as there is no permanent water shortage.

WHENEVER ROOTS ARE ALLOWED to grow deep inside a wall, they can easily damage the wall and cause its destruction. That is precisely what happened to the Angkor temples. This root-related damage can be prevented if water is regularly given to plants. Roots are then only spreading on the surface, leaving the inner wall unaffected. From these observations, and aiming at setting up permanent plant cover on walls with a minimum of maintenance, Patrick Blanc conceived the Vertical Garden.

Taipeh Concert Hall

Bangkok Siam Paragon

Bangkok Emporium Ascenseur

THE CORE INNOVATION is to use the root ability to grow not only in a volume (of soil, of water, of sand, etc.), but also on a surface. Without any soil, the plant-supporting system is very light and thus can be implmented on any wall, whatever its size. The Vertical Garden can also be set up indoors. Artificial lighting is then usually required. It’s even possible to set it up in fully closed places without any natural light such as underground parking lots. The plant species selection is mainly set according to the prevailing climactic conditions.

Aix en Provence

THE VERTICAL GARDEN is composed of 3 parts: a metal frame, a PVC layer, and a layer of felt. The metal frame is hung on a wall or can be self-standing. It provides an air layer acting as a very efficient thermic and phoric isolation system. A 1 cm -thickPVC sheet is riveted to the metal frame. This later brings rigidity to the whole structure and makes it waterproof. A felt layer, made of polyamide, is stapled on the PVC. This felt is rot-proof and its high capillarity allow a homogeneous water distribution. The roots grow on this felt.

PLANTS ARE INSTALLED on this felt layer as seeds, cuttings, or already grown plants. The density is about 30 plants per square metre. The watering is provided from the top. Tap water must be supplemented with nutrients. Watering and fertilization are automated. The whole weight of the Vertical Garden, including plants and metal frame, is lower than 30 kg per square metre. Thus, the Vertical Garden can be implemented on any wall, without any size or height limitation.

London Athenaeum Hotel

Avignon Les Halles

Madrid Caixa Forum

Paris Pershing Hall

Paris Rue d'Alsace

Paris Musee du Quai Branly

THE VERTICAL GARDEN ALLOWS people to re-create a living system very similar to natural environments. It’s a way to add nature to places where man once removed it. Thanks to botanical knowledge, it’s possible to display natural-looking plant landscapes even though they are human-made. In any city, all over the world, a naked wall can be turned into a Vertical Garden and thus be a valuable shelter for biodiversity. It’s also a way to add nature to the daily life of city inhabitants. Besides, thanks to its thermic isolation effect, the Vertical Garden is very efficient and aids in lowering energy consumption, both in winter (by protecting the building from the cold) and in summer (by providing a natural cooling system).

THE VERTICAL GARDEN IS ALSO an efficient way to clean up the air. In addition to leaves and their well-known air-improving effect, the roots and all the micro-organisms related to them are acting as a wide air-cleaning surface with the highest weight to size efficiency. On the felt, polluting particles are taken in from the air and are slowly decomposed and mineralized before ending up as plant fertilizer. The Vertical Garden is thus an efficient tool for air and water remediation wherever flat surfaces are already extensively used for human activities.

SEE MORE of Patrick Blanc’s incredible work online.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=63D2UkkTtBQ