Building a Green Wall - Part 2

So in the last part 1 entry I'd created a quite significantly large and quite ugly looking black and blue wall. Well now in part 2 we're going to make it spectacularly beautiful!

The right hand large blanket added and setting up for the top middle

The greenwall blankets were dead easy to put up. In the photo above you can see the right hand blanket attached, and I'm setting up for the middle one. To attach it I first clamp the blanket to the top of the wall using quick-grip clamps so I can line up the blanket. You need to take care here to ensure that it's stretched tautly otherwise when you load it up with soil it will bow out from the wall.

Once clamped I then drilled a small pilot hole into each eyelet. Remember blue-board is effectively a sheet of concrete, so you need to use a masonry bit to get through it! I then finally drive in a 50mm hex-head screw with washer to secure the blanket to the wall, again making sure that everything is stretched nice and tight before finally tightening up all the screws.

For the large blanket there are 5 fittings across the top, 3 in the middle, and then 3 at the top of the bottom row, which all lined up with the 70x45 battens I had put in when making the frame.

Right and middle completed

Above shows the two middle medium blankets fixed in place in the centre panel. That leaves the large one on the left to be done next!

The large blanket

Above shows a closer view of the large blanket and it's really quite an ingenious design. The kit comes with drip feeder tubes and connections that slide into the fabric above each row of planter pockets. The water from the drippers soak the blanket (remembering it's rubber backed) which in turn waters the pockets. Very clever.

All blankets mounted

This shows the completion of putting up the blankets. Once they were finished I then painted over any of the blue that was still visible to give it a uniform look.

Nice job

Here's the view down the side of the yard. The next job is to fit on the Holman Greenwall planters at the bottom of the large blankets. There's 3 for each side, 6 in total, and luckily for me 3 of the units is pretty much the exact width of the large blanket! Anyone would think I'd planned it that way!

Mounting the planter pots

This shot shows the planter pots fitted on to the bottom under the large right hand blanket. To fit them you have to fix a mounting bracket to the wall that the unit then hangs from. Each unit then clicks into the next one like kids building blocks. For watering you just run a pipe in the bottom of one with a standard snap-on hose connector. If one unit is connected to water, they're all connected, and then there's then an individual dripper for each pot. Another clever design.

Build finished. Now onto the plants

Above is the completed wall with all the blankets and pots in and plumbed. I also added some 12v up and down lighting on either side of the middle section to highlight the plants at night. When everything is done I'll also hook some spots on the ground in front of each panel.

So all that is left now is to plant the plants! There's 44 needed for the large blankets, and 20 for the two medium blankets, and 48 for all the pots. That's 112 plants (and then some as I was to find out) to buy and plant, so I'd better get cracking!

Centre section planted

Above shows the completed and planted centre section. The wall faces due south and is pretty shaded for much of the day, so I picked some sun loving cascading plants for the top level, and then worked my way down the wall until I got down to very shade tolerant ferns at the bottom. I brought the plants in pairs so it would give the wall a nice even look. I also ended up buying more than 112 as some of the bigger pockets can accommodate two or three medium plants, just to give more variety.

The guys at Jamie Durie emailed me a planting guide on request which was pretty handy, but it was mostly for a Sydney climate, not a Melbourne one. So I took it down to the local nursery at Bulleen Art and Garden who helped me pick the kinds of species from the list that I should be planting. 

After the first section it was pretty easy, I just used a good quality general purpose potting mix to fill the pockets to plant into.

Starting to plant the right side

Above you can see I am getting ready to plant out one of the large blankets. For the bottom row small pots I just bought a few trays of Petunia and Impatiens which were super cheap, and allowed me to plant all the pots. I also spot planted the leftover ones randomly in amongst the bigger plants to give that burst of colour in all the green.

For the placement of the bigger plants, as you can see in the picture, I would just drop the whole pot (or pots) into the pockets to see how it would look when planted. The big pockets can hold a large pot or two medium pots. Doing this first allows you to mix and move things about before taking the plunge and planting the plants permanently.

Once I was satisfied with the look I'd then start at the top row and half fill the pocket with potting mix, then de-pot and drop the plant in, and finally fill in around the plant with more mix. When it was filled I'd then give the pocket a bit of a bash with my fist just to settle the soil and plant in, water it in well, and then move onto the next pocket.

Planting done

Pretty soon the whole wall was done! In terms of costs it was around $600 - $700 per panel to plant them out, but the final product was worth every cent! I'm really happy with the result.

Job done. Time for a beer

This is now my number one favourite spot, and thanks to the beautiful new green wall we have some privacy while still being able to say hi to the neighbours, and we're doing the planet a favour to boot! 

With the trailing plants on the top row I have begun training some of them to go over the back of the wall as well, so that it will eventually soften the look on the other side too.

The lunch table is set and the BBQ is on!

So that's it for the green wall project, I hope you enjoyed the journey as much as I enjoy the result on an almost daily basis. Until next time, stay green!

Building a Green Wall - Part 1

Remember the neighbours trampoline after finishing the deck? Well I love the neighbours kids and all, but them bouncing up and down, and in turn watching us having lunch on the deck (or me trying to sleep!) wasn't the best, so I resolved to have a go at doing something about it. 

Like Hadrian in England and the Chinese with the Great Wall, I also chose to build a wall, but in this instance a GREEN one!

So after discussing with the neighbours and getting the OK it was full steam ahead with the green-wall construction project.

I must do something about the view

Now there's a number of different options available in a wide, wide, range from the really cheap, to the very, very expensive commercial/industrial models. So as always I hit up Google with a few searches on "building a green wall" and "building a vertical garden", from which you'll find lots of options available as well as plenty of DIY information.

You'll find there's a lot of "pot planter" options available on the market which you can pick up from various distributors or even your local hardware supplier. These have the advantage of maximum flexibility. With the area I was dealing with, and the size of the wall I wanted to build, cost was probably going to be an issue though. The whole thing it's 6m long and nearly 3.5m high at the highest point!

Holman Greenwall

So looking further into pot kits I came across the Holman GreenWall. It's a great product with snap in irrigation and pots, that allow you to change the pots (and hence the plants) in and out at will.  The limitation for my use is that it only has 8 pots per $69 unit (priced from Bunnings) and to cover the entire wall was going to take quite a few thousand dollars worth of units, not to mention all the plants needed to then fill all those pots!

After further investigation and emailing, I finally settled on a local product that comes courtesy of Australian celebrity gardener Jamie Dury. He has a product called the Greenwall Blanket, and it was going to fit the requirement just nicely, and without breaking the bank. 

The blankets come in three sizes; small 600x600, medium 1200x1100, and large at 1800x1800. They're hung up by eyelets built into the fabric, they're rubber backed for waterproofing, and they have an inbuilt drip watering system. Each blanket comes with varying size pockets for planting in, so you can have a variety of plant sizes across the blanket (as opposed to the pot systems where generally they're all the same size).

The area I want the wall to cover is 6m long and runs right along the edge of the fence. One of the things I also want to include in the wall is that it won't be a 100% solid wall (I do actually quite like the neighbours!) so I planned to leave some semi-transparent sections as part of the build.

Here's the plan I came up with:

The Green Wall Plan

The wall will be divided into three sections, 2 wide sections on either side, and a narrower one in the middle. These sections will be divided up by four 600 mm wide OutDeco Panels (you may remember I used them when screening the side deck and the garden utility area), using the "Bungalow" pattern, which will give me 80% block out/privacy while still allowing me to still say hi to the neighbours!

For the Greenwall blankets, I will use two large blankets for the left and right outside panels, and two medium blankets mounted vertically for the centre panel. Because the large blankets aren't quite as long as two medium blankets, I plan to fill out the bottom of the large blankets with the Holman Greenwall units, which I'll plant out with seasonal annuals or herbs in the smaller pots, giving me the flexibility to easily change them around. I'll need 3 units each side, 6 in total, which shouldn't break the bank.

So that's the plan, but first things first, is to put 8 posts into the ground to support the wall using 125x75 rough-sawn cypress. There's a 50 cm drop along the fence line, so the last post will be longer than the first.

A row of posts to start

Above you can see the posts dropped in and concreted with the tops levelled off. Let me tell you it was far from an easy job! 

As you might remember there's a significantly large tree in the yard (you can see it in the top photo) and when the neighbours property was completed they put in what is called a "root block". This is essentially a large and deep excavation filled with concrete, designed to stop the roots from the tree entering their property. Well this root block chunk of concrete was sitting pretty much right where I needed to drop the posts in!

It wasn't all bad news though, as there was luckily a 60cm gap between the block and the side fence which was just enough space to drop in the post hole digger with a 50 cm auger attached. JUST enough! Believe me it was a VERY tight fit! 

The block trench wasn't in a straight line either, and as I worked my way down the row of holes that 60cm gap got narrower until it was down to under 50cm. At that point there was no choice left but to head down the hire shop to get a large electric jack-hammer to cut into the root block concrete.

This should do the trick nicely

Eventually after all screwing around with the post-hole digger, the jackhammer, and after a lot of blood, sweat, and swearing, I ended up with eight 70 cm deep holes and all posts in and set down in concrete. Phew!

I can see it already

Above clearly shows the outline of how the wall will look in terms of cover-up. I levelled off the top of the posts by running a stringline, then constructed a wooden jig to support the circular saw. With the jig fitted to each post I then ran the saw around to make them all nice and even.

Once the posts were finalised I then laid some 70 x 45 horizontal timber battens to brace the structure, and importantly to support the greenwall blankets. I notched in one across the top, and then further horizontal members to line up with the eyelets on the blankets in each of the three sections.

Outta sight!

Once the frame was completed, you can see above that I then covered the larger sections in HardieTex blue-board and then fitted in the Outdeco screen panels. Harditex is water and rot resistant, so was going to serve as an excellent backing for the blankets. 

You can also see I got busy with a paint tin and brush, painting the entire structure to match the neighbours fence colour which is charcoal black (you can see their fence in the background top right of the photo above). Thinking ahead I'd painted all the posts, railings and the back of the HardieTex before mounting so I didn't need to go next door to paint the fence!

That's a tall wall

I didn't need to paint the front of the blue board as it was going to have the blankets mounted onto it so I left them blue, but painted around the edge anywhere the board might have been visible under the blanket. 

Why is the middle one painted black you may ask? Because I painted it on the wrong side when I was painting them! You'll have to trust me it's black in the other side as well!

Getting ready to mount the planting blankets

So that's the wall structure completed! It's certainly ugly, but just wait until the plants go up!.

Next time we'll mount the blankets and pots, fit the drip watering system, and lastly plant the plants all in part 2!