For some, having a large blank wall in a home might be soothing, but others feel the need to fill such spaces with a showstopper like original art, or maybe a gallery wall or a beautiful piece of furniture. But what about a wall of … plants?

Vertical gardens, essentially landscapes installed on walls with watering systems built in, were once rarely found outside of larger corporate and public building spaces like Google, Symantec or Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Over the past few years, that’s changed as more and more residents have started installing “living walls” in their homes.

David Brenner, founder of Habitat Horticulture and who is known for creating massive living walls at some of Silicon Valley’s biggest tech companies, said his work is now spent busily installing outdoor and indoor dramatic living walls at homes throughout the Bay Area, as well as other settings like the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Residential projects have included everything from installing gardens as high as 16 feet tall to creating small, dramatic walls at the end of a pool area. One Los Altos client tired of staring at concrete in his basement lightwell hired Brenner to create a lush green-on-green mini jungle. Another resident in Mountain View asked him to install a vertical garden that hangs from vaulted ceilings over an open-plan living area.

Natural landscapes are his inspiration

Brenner got his inspiration to create living walls while studying horticulture at Cal Poly. He spent his junior year abroad as an apprentice in the London’s Royal Botanic Gardens, studying tropical plants that naturally grow on rock faces. That’s when he began to think about plants that grow in unusual ways.

His imagination was sparked the first time he saw a vertical garden in Europe. When he got back, his patient parents let him practice building them on the walls of his childhood home in San Jose. A few years later, Brenner started his company and began experimenting, helping to restore a moss wall in San Francisco’s Academy of Science’s basement and later installing a fresh living wall in the museum’s piazza. Brenner said his minor degree in psychology has helped him connect with clients and analyze the innate connection between humans and plants.

“I try to design in a way that’s a little more something you find in nature,” Brenner said.

There’s usually some “rhythm” or “movement,” with repetition and textures to lead the observer’s eye over the piece. While most indoor walls aren’t more than a few inches deep, Brenner uses texture and a “hierarchy of plant depth” to create dimension. With every project, he tries to include one plant he hasn’t used before, whether it’s Japanese maple, ferns, geraniums or colorful heuchera. Plant walls, he said, “open up so much more joy in life,” creating a multisensory experience.

Plants are her paint, walls are her canvas

Like Brenner, Amanda Goldberg, founder of Planted Design in Emeryville, has always been passionate about plants, but she came at her life’s work from a different direction. She studied industrial design in college, and found herself “always finding ways to make plants more functional. I also was getting excited about integrating them with shelving.”

During her undergraduate years at Syracuse University, Goldberg built a glass-topped desk installed with plants underneath as a class project. Later when studying for her master’s degree in entrepreneurship, she focused on creating functional designs with plants.

“I’ve really always liked 3D objects,” she said.

Integrating all of her interests, Goldberg founded Planted Design less than a decade ago. The company’s warehouse is a plant-filled makerspace where reclaimed or hardwood frames are fabricated for vertical garden projects. Plants for these gardens are chosen for their shallow roots, compact growth, or leaf color. The roots tend to grow inward and then downward.

Irrigation, obviously essential for plant survival, is surprisingly simple, involving either hand-filling built-in trays or troughs with fresh water, or drip systems with emitters set on timers. Designers assess whether the wall has access to electricity or plumbing before deciding which type of irrigation system to use or whether to include lighting.

Goldberg uses pressure-treated wood for the non-visible parts of her frames, with reclaimed or hardwood for the visible parts. Brenner often uses waterproof plastic layers for interior walls before mounting a special felt fabric with holes to put the plants into. Exterior projects must take into account temperature, sunlight, and other environmental factors. Indoor ones need carefully chosen plants that can thrive without nightly drops in temperature, drastic changes in lighting or lower humidity.

Planted Design’s largest living wall is a 1,400-square-foot outdoor plant sculpture that follows a fence line. It starts with strawberries and fragrant flowers, goes into a “whole succulent swirl,” Goldberg said, then colorful flowers then a grassy meadow, ending by the home’s pool and outdoor kitchen.

“What I’m most inspired by is not doing the same thing twice,” she said. Price is also a substantial barrier to entry, so she doesn’t foresee living walls being something people could buy in a kit at a big box store.

Goldberg also creates dramatically colorful moss walls, which are portable works of art using moss. They are maintenance-free, as glycerin is used to “fill” the plants where sap would be. No watering necessary. Inside homes, common plant choices are hearty vibrant pothos, which grow as vines in tropical areas, or bromeliads, which produce large red and orange and pink flowers. Ferns and palms are other go-to plants. Many vertical gardens, Goldberg said, can be flexible, using a plug-and-play approach where potted plants can be removed and replaced. Each plant’s roots are wrapped in a special felt material before being put into a pocket. Water is circulated using a lower trough from which water is pumped up to reach all of the plants.

Most vertical gardens weigh only about 7 pounds per square foot, so generally interior walls do not need to be retrofitted before the frame is mounted. A basic Planted Design living wall starts at approximately $175 per square foot, with design, installation and delivery added after that.

For outdoor spaces, Goldberg loves bringing in flowering plants that will attract bees and butterflies, or even things like edible strawberries. The schemes are laid out on a computer, with swirls of color planned to look as natural and organic as possible.

“We see plants as our paint and walls as our canvas,” she said. “I am huge on color. Rainbow is my favorite color.”

This story originally appeared in Embarcadero Media’s Fall 2022 Home & Garden Design magazine.

Wait. There’s more …

Discover a new growing trend: Peninsula eateries filled with lush floral decor.

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Dan Bebak, vice president of the Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium, got out of his construction truck and headed to the construction site for the new Mote Science Education Aquarium, which is adjacent to Nathan Benderson Park in Sarasota.

As he approached the construction site, he kept looking up.

yes, up

Up is a celebratory word for mote because it means its $130 million project (now a $132 million project), announced in February 2018 and breaking ground in November 2020, has begun, to make a visual impression on everyone who passes by.

That’s a massive impact considering that more than 50 million vehicles pass through the 11.76-acre property along Interstate 75 in a year.

In addition to the busy workers on the ground floor, there are two huge cranes that move building materials that are supposed to blow up. Columns and elevator shafts have already stretched into the sky, and in May the giant acrylic windows in the Gulf of Mexico, which help form a tank that occupies both the first and second floors of the three-story, 110,000-square-foot building, will be placed.

Because this display tank in the Gulf of Mexico is so massive, builders Willis Smith Construction and Whiting-Turner must place it before they can begin building the walls around it. Then the vertical construction takes off.

Interest increases

“Once you go vertical, the (funding) increases,” said Michael Moore, special adviser to the Office of the President at Mote. “By then you have to be a visionary. Now the public is feeling the mood.”

Moore said Mote has a $100 million pledge for the aquarium, with “a few” other big potential donors seriously considering getting on board.

But he said the vertical phase of a project is often what stimulates corporate sponsorship the most.

“Corporate sponsorship is the last thing,” he said. “They want to get closer to get real. Now it’s really happening.”

Bebak began working at Mote as an intern in 1981 and was hired on permanently in 1985. Eventually, he worked his way up the ladder to oversee an annual budget of $7 million and 70 employees.

“It’s great to run out there,” he said of the site. “And it’ll be nice to say, ‘There’s the tank from the Gulf of Mexico.'”

The two acrylic “windows” that make up the exhibition tank in the Gulf of Mexico together weigh 14 tons. This will be a sight in itself (although the acrylic will be covered in plywood) as passers-by can see the tank being built throughout May and June. The windows are shipped from Reynolds Polymer Technology of Grand Junction, Colorado.

Then it’s off to the races.

The new Mote Science Education Aquarium will include a display tank in the Gulf of Mexico.

With kind approval

As the project progresses, most of the work on the second and third floors will be completed before the ground floor is completed. Bebak said heavy materials like the tanks would have to be moved to the first floor, which would ruin the floor.

While people think vertical structures start from the ground up, Bebak noted that the 368 piles erected to support the structure are actually vertical, with the piles reaching 80 to 90 feet into the ground.

To date, Mote has spent approximately $30 million on on-site and underground construction.

Exactly according to plan

“We are on schedule and plan to open in autumn 2024,” said Bebak. “Now that we’re going vertical, we know what we’re up against. We will fill the water in the tanks and bring in the fish.

The pools will be fully stocked with wildlife months before the doors open to the public in the fall of 2024. Wild animals need time to acclimate. Natural seawater is predominantly used to fill the tanks.

“We’ll have a better idea of ​​opening dates in a few months,” Bebak said. “And you never know what the weather will be like.”

Half of the third level of the aquarium will be in the open air. This gives guests an indoor-outdoor experience.

Moore said successful planning has allowed the project to stay mostly within budget during a period of extreme inflation. The original price of $130 million had introduced some inflation, but Moore said Mote had been buying materials and setting prices for more than three years.

“We don’t see that escalation (in the budget),” Moore said.

Bebak noted that the construction project is highly specialized as almost every part of the aquarium has life support systems and specialized pumps, filters, piping, air conditioning and heating systems.

All support systems such as B. columns must be extremely strong. For example, the Florida Waters Gallery’s tank on the third floor will hold 300,000 gallons of water.

“They need a lot more rebar,” Bebak said.

All of that has been taken into account.

“The project is moving,” said Bebak. “Nothing will stop us except a little weather here and there.”

Mote estimates that the aquarium will attract 600,000 to 700,000 visitors in its first year.

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