I've heard soo much about vertical gardening of late. I'm not sure where the hype has all come from but from what I can gather this method of gardening has been around since the 70's. There is an idiosyncratic artist/botanist by the name of: Patrick Blanc (oh sooo french) I just love his work, he gets to landscape buildings, inside of hotels, you name it he has probably done it. Amazing stuff, check out his walls - such a visual feast for the eyes.

Succulents were decided on, drought tolerant and of course beautiful. Vaguely I remember seeing a project in a magazine which was made from succulents..after lots of searching on the net finally I thought...I've never found a place in my gardens for them - one which didn't make me feel like they were just put there because there was nowhere else they seem to go.  I'd seen some other garden beds with succulents which were amazing but for it to look good in my eyes they need to all be succulents, that kind of garden never really appealed to me on a large scale.  But now we could have a whole succulent garden 'contained'.

My search for a variety of plants went on a bit.  I brought some from an ad in Gumtree as well as visited all the nursery and plants wholesalers I could find.  Nothing reasonably priced but I did score a few good pots with loads of rosettes of house leeks at a bargain price of $15 from a Nursery in Preston. I got some ground covers too. The saviour after many trips around town was the La Trobe Uni Market on Sundays.. there we snagged a whole tray of mixed babies for $60.. less than your $2-3 a pot I have seen.  Happy Days.. we are ready for planting.

This project is neither extravagant nor on such a large scale but still.. a type of vertical garden which I see as my own artistic expression. A girlfriend and I with the help of the lovely men in our lives (and power tools) set out on a mission to create pieces to hang in our own gardens.

In a nutshell wooden boxes were made to hold the growing medium, they were then made into 4 squares  (to help the medium not all fall to the bottom when vertical), with steel mesh and weed mat put on in the front.  The boxes were then filled with mushroom compost and potting mix.. the backs were screwed in place (made from some perspex offcuts) we turned them over and created holes in the weed mat to plant out our garden.  We put wood surrounds to frame the boxes and them painted them with Petina paint - a kind of effect paint to give it a rusty effect.