Happy Winter Garden Lovers and I thought would show you just a brief to the Greenwall evolution, since they tick so many boxes for many clients in terms of space saving and maximum impact.. !
Grow Bands give precise feature to otherwise blank walls by bringing the luxuriance of rich textural contrasts for year round interest, to meet all converging sight lines from inside & outside.
Facing north, this combination is resilient to harsh high summer scorch and reduces visual glare and ‘push-back’ from the built environment, with welcome relief that only living plants can bring. It’s courtyard setting now leverages egress to it’s adjacent kitchen by doubling entertainment space, bringing the outside in and the inside out.
Measuring 9 x 3.5m this double sided greenwall in the great divide between private step out space on the house side and an impressive sense of arrival to the drive side.
Give us privacy and feature without taking up useful space, that was the brief for this split level design with a higher point of access off the rear lane. So a super sized double sided Greenwall was borne from necessity, to bring an intimate scale shielded on the house side from tall office buildings AND an impressive welcome to this drive side in approach.
So many apartment step out spaces requiring a ‘soft down’ to bring foliage relief to a hard-fest of built environment surfaces.
‘I would go out there more often but there’s really nothing to entice.’
A very common part of the apartment living experience, especially when all views are equally experienced from inside … no ? Enter a swish end wall greenwall, a slimmer counterpoint from the B/room slides and a free standing part rail Grow Band and all is lush and inviting. All are self irrigated and combine with cac & succ combinations for the built in planters suited to the N/W aspect. Bring on the cocktails !!!!
Combination Green Wall & Eco Pillow runs transforms built hard surface to lush abundance
Apartment living is here to stay and as many choose the lower maintenance option this lifestyle brings, interesting challenges are being met with innovative and sustainable outcomes for the ‘garden in the sky’.
So you’ve decided to leave the expense of a high maintenance family home for apartment living. Ok, well while there are going to be some adjustments to be made now you’re ‘living in the sky’, you’ve probably noticed a big change from a garden growing on terra-firma as a ground dweller. While its lovely not having to worry about gutters and rising damp, unrelieved hard surface surrounding your every moment might be a little jarring to get get used to ….
What to do to trade off some of that unyielding hard surface for lush green cover .. to bring back balance in a living surround.. ?
Transform hard surface visual ‘bounce back’ for lush visually absorbent green cover
Combination Greenwalls with Eco Pillow runs are the new frontier in transformation of the built environment. Super water efficient with their own irrigation system and drip trays, 2m x 1m panels cover majority vertical spaces in ‘portrait’ orientation and are extended across horizontal expanses using 800 x 400mm Eco Pillows end to end in ‘landscape’ orientation.
Once reliable water is connected, the impact of high exposure aspects from the 4th floor and much higher, can be made sustainable with a fertiliser injector for easy nutrition to a vast band width of plant selection adaptable from epiphytic and lithophytic habitats. A myriad of various bromeliads from aechaea, neoregelia, vriesea, canistropsis, canistrum and even the Giant Landscape species alcantarea. These can form a majority planting space at uppermost reaches for the most sun tolerance, with native hoya australis on grow supports to extend cover to higher horizontal hard surface. Progressively self shaded, the lower reaches are best for a mix of foliage contrasts as understory in peperomia, plectranthus, begonias, streptocarpus, epiphyllum and ferns to take up lower position micro climates.
Eco Pillow run made into a ‘green-band’ in high exposure doing so well in its first season
Growing media comprises a majority of inorganic component parts that won’t disintegrate, leaving plants in ‘root block’ depletion and susceptible to predation with nothing to grow in after the first year. Instead available pore space is kept above an acceptable minimum, so your Greenwall has a beautifully long life expectancy. Maintenance is built into your installation contract and can be arranged after the initial grow in period.
Why live in a hard surface environment closer to the polar bear exhibit at the zoo, when you could frame the view, back the bathroom or grow a wreath of rich contrasts just where you need it most !
.. and if your Greenwall requirements are just part of your scope of work to be Project Managed together, call Garden Designer Peter Nixonor call 0418 161513
[Image] My Forresters Beach garden ….. before the stump grinder arrives next week for some “tough love” !
Starting From Scratch …. again!
Thinking about what to talk about with Simon Marnie on his Weekends program on ABC 702 tomorrow morning and what could be more universal than how to start a garden after moving … ?
So, that’s what we’ll be talking about if you’d care to tune in from 9am till 9.40am with your morning toast. Hmmmm… what to do with that grass and a fairly lack lustre array of inherited mixed shrubs. I think all those empty moving boxes still lurking in the garage might be involved for sure :0
Don’t forget after that, the RBG Growing Friends Sydney have their big spring sale on tomorrow, Saturday 11th October, 10am till 4pm at their:
Growing Nursery near The RBG Friends, off Mrs Macquarie’s Road
Chrysophyllum imperiale (each approx 50cm tall)
12 Euphorbia ammak, bare rooted and 1-2 metres tall
Clivia x cytanthiflora and about 80 Hippeastrum cultivars (some in flower)
