How To Build A Green Wall

I decided last year that I needed to green up our balcony. Space is a premium, so the only place left to plant is on the walls. My plan was to build a Green Wall on our south facing wall.

Photo from Eco-friendly Promos

I had the idea when I saw all the water that was being generated by our air-conditioner just going to waste. I was using some of it to water our plants around our apartment and on our balcony, but I thought there must be another way I could use it. A green wall seemed like the ideal way of planting in a confined space, and using the waste water from our air-conditioner.

After quite a bit of research, I found the simplest method was pioneered by a French botanist by the name of Patrick Blanc.  He calls it Le Mur Vegetal, and its really quite a simple solution. He has built several Vertical Gardens throughout the world, and a few people have adapted his method to create their own. Before I began, I sat down and planned in detail on Sketchup how to build it. If you're interested in building your own one, this is a short video I made to show the steps involved in making your own green wall.

Behind The Scenes - Coastal Dune Garden

Creating gardens on the coast is always a challenge. There are all kinds of things to consider, like salt air, strong winds and sandy soil. Added to these natural limits, is the fact that the garden is often just the foreground to the real view - the ocean. So it needs to compliment rather than try to steal the show.

This garden is actually the second garden I've done for these particular clients - they moved from their previous home in Morningside when they found this odd 1970's house in the La Lucia area of Durban with potentially amazing views of the ocean.
They kept the general layout of the house and completely gutted it, but essentially started again. The garden itself was a neglected, overgrown mix of plants that sloped down to the neighbour's house below.

This was a really great project for a number of reasons. I have the benefits of having a good relationship with both the client and the architect, and that, coupled with being involved right from the start, I was able to add my 2 cents worth to the project as it evolved. Also, having the advantage of being part of the project from the start - almost 3 years in total, it gave me the time to really digest the site and the design. These are definitely key ingredients in making a successful garden.

Too often in landscape design, everybody involved is in a rush. We designers, are usually brought in at the last minute, and are usually the last on site, and so we often bear the brunt of the clients lack of patience because of the usual contractors delays. Being last in the chain also has other disadvantages. In most cases, projects run over budget, and the easiest place to save money is by cutting back on the 'luxury' areas like landscaping. But its not all frustration. You also get the best look at the finished product, and share in some of the excitement that the client is beginning to feel as they see the project nearing completion. This really makes for great job satisfaction.

My clients previous garden, with roses and lavender

My clients were wanting the garden to be quite different to their previous garden, which was full of roses, and quite formal. I was relieved to hear this, because the property was quite exposed on the top of a dune, which meant we would be using a fairly limited range of plants. Roses or similar exotic plants would need an inordinate amount of attention to keep them alive - let alone looking good. The words Aloe and stone were mentioned during our preliminary discussion about the garden, and I could feel my excitement levels rising...
Although they did have one request, coming from a relatively small garden they would want it to be as open as possible, with as big a lawn area as possible.

The "Blank Slate" - you can see the unusable lawn, and the house below, that needs screening.

We removed almost all of the plants while the builder began the demolition of the existing house. The only plant that had any real value to the garden was a huge milkwood in the driveway. The driveway and boundary wall was laid out to make sure that it was kept safe.

One of the first steps, as in most landscape designs, was to sort out levels. As I've mentioned before, creating level areas makes the garden much more user-friendly. Keeping the garden on the same level as the house means that people are more likely to spill out into the lawn.
The retaining wall below the garden had a height restriction which was well below the homes ground floor level - this would mean I would have to do some lateral thinking to try to find a way of getting the lawn level right.

Due to height restrictions, the top of the retaining wall was still well below the level we needed it to be

The second challenge in the design of the garden, was the proximity of the house in front. From the ground level of the house it not only partially blocks the view of the ocean, but is the last thing you want to be looking at when you're sitting in your lounge or dining area.
The solution would be to raise the garden to the groundfloor level. This meant that we would be able to keep the planting relatively low, and still screen the neighbour's house.

Making use of the attractive vistas, and hiding the less attractive can be one of the hardest balancing acts in a garden design. It needs to be done subtly, but effectively.
This garden was one of the trickiest I've worked on, because of the multiple levels and views in the house. Also, having the beautiful sea views and the big house both dominating the front view, made it particularly difficult.

Oehme & Van Sweden - Chicago Botanic Gardens

I began the design of the garden with a picture in my mind of flowing grasses, and mass planting along the lines of an Oehme and Van Sweden garden. They use a more naturalistic style, which would suit the site, and the use of indigenous plants. The challenge would be to create this feel in the narrow space available for the planting.

I also had a picture of the way sand forms ripples on the beach, and thought I'd like to capture something of that feel in the design. This would translate into building up berms of sand, which would make a great platform on which to plant. Slowly, the design was beginning to take shape.

I took some photos of the garden, and used these to trace and sketch the picture that was beginning to form in my head.

After all the planning comes the hard slog. To begin with, we had to move about 80m3 of soil into the garden, and shape and level, and re-shape and re-level, and then do it all over again. Finally, the structure was all there just waiting to be dressed up with plants. We're almost there now, but I'll post a follow-up on the planting once we've completed it.

Advice on Dealing With Your Garden Designer

I've recently had some meetings with an architect where I presented some ideas for a project in the Umhlanga area.
I had initially presented an idea to him, where he gave good constructive feedback. He was very clear about what he liked, and what he didn't like about the concept. We agreed on the areas that needed re-thinking, and planned to meet the following week to review the changes.

When we met again, he was very pleased with the final concept, and I left feeling quite relieved.
He was quite apologetic for being so direct with his criticism, but I assured him that I appreciated his feedback.
It really highlighted for me again the value of good, clear, honest communication. Only when we can speak openly without fear of offending, is it possible to get a final result that everyone is happy with. It was only because of his comments that I was able to improve on what I had initially drawn up.

Another aspect that is important to understand in this process of design is that when you are dealing with your landscaper/designer, nothing is final. Almost anything can be altered in order to improve the overall design, and its best to make changes earlier rather than later - because once the design is finalised, changes result in delays, which almost always bring extra costs.

How Do You Classify A Garden?

Gardening in this new millennium, has become a very different creature to what it once was. In some ways this is an oddity - gardening as a craft being at its core, so basic and archaic, is so intrinsically separate from technology.

But technology has had its effect though - through the development and use of new materials and technologies but also through the spread of ideas via the internet and media.

A Plant Dominant Indigenous Garden

There is more discussion taking place today about gardening and about what defines a garden than has ever taken place before. This conversation is occurring between professionals and hobbyists, intellectuals and labourers.

Out of this conversation, a question I've been asking myself lately is -

'How do you classify a garden?'

Even as I write that, I can hear some people saying, "Why would you even want to classify a garden? A garden is something to be appreciated and felt, and admired."
That is all true, but I see so many types of gardens, from all over the world that it is becoming harder to fit them into the traditional definitions that I'm used to, and as a result, harder to understand.

I believe that people take comfort in our ability to divide and classify the world and put it into nice neat little boxes. In some ways it even makes us human - this ability to define something.

Gardening as an art-form, has not been spared this need to separate and define. Formal, Contemporary, English Country, Eastern, Natural, Wild, Indigenous, Zen...the list goes on and on.

A Structure Dominant Wild Garden

With this classification of gardens into types, and because of the continual segmentation, and the blurring of lines, I believe there exists a need to define gardens in more general terms.

To explain, I'll use an example that we as gardeners are familiar with - just as a particular plant has a Genus, and is then divided into its species, the Species of gardens (i.e. Tropical, Minimalist, Formal) need to be grouped together into Genera.

This is necessary, not for the sake of classifying for classifying's sake.
But rather as:

• a way to clear up miscommunication between client and designer.
• a tool for teaching and passing on knowledge in clear terms.
• a spur to push designers and gardeners to try something different, and venture into new territory.

The most obvious way of defining, would be to look for the defining dominance in the design of the garden.

• Plant dominant - Where the garden's essence is about the plants themselves (Tropical, Indigenous/native, English Country, Natural, Collector)
• Concept dominant - These gardens revolve around an idea or concept(Zen, Feng Shui, Modern)
• Structure dominant - These gardens have strong shape and/or geometry (Formal, Contemporary, Minimalist)
• Function dominant - Where the function of the garden takes precedence (Lawn for playing, Parking Area, Patio)

This defining dominance would be primarily visual - it would be the character of the garden that unifies it or makes it stand out. It could also be intellectual - a garden built around an idea or concept that may or may not be immediately obvious, but that was the guiding principle behind its design. (e.g. Jenck's - Garden of Cosmic Speculation)

A Structure Dominant Formal Garden

But gardens are not always so easily put into their respective boxes, and here is where the Linnaeus analogy becomes inadequate. The gardens themselves may fall into more than one of the above groups. For example, a typical tropical garden at its essence is built around particular types of plants (Plant Dominant), but if the structure of the garden dominates, it could also be Structure Dominant. As to which is truly dominant would become a more subjective matter.

To use a more specific example - many of Gertrude Jekyll's garden's would have been strongly Plant dominant, but with Sir Edwin Lutyens' architectural input, they also had a very strong Structure dominance.

I see the practicalities of this idea being in creating a concept that makes communication clearer and simpler between client and designer, student and teacher, and between various professions relating to the gardening industry.

Gardening has been an art that has been nurtured by the hands of amateurs through the ages, and has at times, and in various cultures been analysed by the mind as well as the heart, but as the world gets internet-smaller, and communication happens across the globe, the thought processes behind garden design will and should become more apparent and utilised by the lay-person and professional alike.
For this reason, I believe that it would help if we spoke in similar terms.

Forage Oakland

If you follow Bloggers 'Blog Of Note' you'll probably have already read about this great idea, and even though its a rather tenuous link to the world of Landscape Design, I thought it was worth a mention.

Asiya Wadud has started a movement called Forage Oakland - the idea being that people would get together in their neighbourhoods to forage for produce from gardens, that would otherwise go to waste. She puts it far more elegantly in her manifesto, and is definitely worth reading.

I love the idea of taking such an ancient method of survival, and bringing it back into todays context as a solution to some of the problems that we face in society at the moment. I hope the idea catches on.

Behind The Scenes - Drakensburg Aloe Garden

The Drakensburg is a spectacular range of mountains that creates quite a scenic border to the South West of Kwazulu Natal. It has quite an extreme climate compared to what we're used to on the coast - with hot days and cold nights, sudden extreme thunderstorms which bring heavy rain and sometimes hail.

I was asked recently to come up with a basic sketch for a back garden in the Drakensburg that sloped away quite steeply. The concept was to use mainly Aloes and other indigenous plants that would add to their already beautiful scenery.

I felt that the garden didn't make good enough use of the views, so I suggested that we have an area of flagstone pavers just outside the back sliding doors, where you could have a table and chairs and sit and have meals while enjoying the view.

As you can see in the very misty photo's, the ground just disappears away, and leaves very little interest in this part of the garden. To remedy this, the plan would be to bring in some extra soil to create a couple of small berms to plant on, and these would create a bit of a replication of the distant hills and mountains. We would also bring up some of the large rocks from the bottom of the bank to plant around, and to make great features themselves.

The planting itself would be indigenous, and ideally endemic to the area. I created a couple of palettes of the plants that I would like to use, to give my clients an idea of what the garden would look like.

The sketch plan, shows the position of the house, with the new paved area, and the changes to the back garden area and bank. The idea is that the plants would slowly blend into the existing grassland below the house.

I have provided a plant list on the side with approximate positions of the plants.

Implementing the design would be quite a challenge, due to the fact that it is with it being so out of the way, and sourcing materials might not be that easy. But also because some of those rocks that I would like to use won't be easy to roll up hill - but they'll be essential in creating a beautiful garden.

Planning Your Garden 3 - Factors Affecting Style

One of the first things, that I do when I am called in to landscape a garden, is to ask my client what their preferences are when it comes to styles for their garden. Most people haven't given it much thought before I ask the question.

There are several factors which influence the style, even before our preferences enter the picture:

The architecture probably has the biggest effect on how your garden should look. A cottage garden might not be ideal surroundings for a modern or contemporary building, however a minimalist feel might be far more harmonious with that type of structure.

The second biggest influence would most likely be the climate of the area. While not impossible, a tropical fern garden in the desert would require a lot of work to keep it looking good.

Another big factor would be the conditions on site. Is the area small or large; is it steep or level; is the soil predominantly clay or just plain sand? What does the surrounding vegetation or neighbouring properties look like. All these are questions that need to be answered before our particular tastes are addressed.

With the above influences in mind, the next step is to consider the individual tastes that make us who we are. Here are just a few things to think about:

• Are you happier in a neat and ordered space, or do you prefer a little bit of wildness around you?
• Do you want to relax, or play in the space?
• Who will use the garden mainly?
• Have you got time to work in your garden or do you just want to admire it without the physical work involved?
• Are you wanting to attract wildlife into your garden or is that not even a consideration?
• Do you want to grow food, or are flowers essential?

If I were to ask all these questions when I first meet a client, the meeting would feel more like an interrogation. So I will often look at the interior of the house or building, the predominant colours and interior styles in order to get an idea of their tastes. Besides, a garden should be a reflection to an extent of the people who use the space, so most times, an informal discussion gives me more of a clue as to the personality of a person, and by extension, the type of garden that they would like.

Entrance Area Garden Design

I was a bit disappointed today to hear that a garden that I've been working on some designs for over the past few weeks, is not going to happen. I've been quite looking forward to building this garden.

This is the front entrance at the moment. It is at the top of a long driveway, and is quite plain, with some colourful annuals in pots to brighten things up a bit. There are probably too many different types and styles of pots - it would need something to bring everything together in this area for it to be successful. It also gets quite hot from about 10 in the morning.

The client was looking for something simple but colourful to brighten up the area. It should be low maintenance, but create a great first impression. My suggestion for the new entrance area was built around trying to create the impression of overlapping curves or waves. The first curve would consist of closely fitting rock and pebbles, and the corresponding section of pathway would have the pebbles set into a concrete screed.

The second 'layer' would step up, with a cobblestone edging along the top of the wall. The planting would have been a combination of low growing vygies (mesembryanthemum) or other colourful sun loving plants. Another option would have been to use temporary planting like annuals, so that my very busy clients could have a part to play in the garden without it being overly taxing on their time. The corresponding section of pathway would be an exposed aggregate with a white screed.

The next level up would have an urn with or without running water, and more permanent planting that would grow to about 300mm-500mm in height. Possibly Crassula or Senecio?

The final level would have planting with longer leaves for contrast. Some options would be Red Hot Poker, Bulbine, Agapanthus, or even Aloe. The last section of pathway before the white tiles would be a white concrete screed.

The planting is never final at this stage, because I like to live with the idea for a while before deciding on the planting. I usually start with the characteristics of the plants that I would like to use in an area, and then refine that to a few options before deciding on the final plant. But often even then, I sometimes have to make concessions because plants are unavailable. This then sometimes has a knock-on effect which results in having to change other plants to get the right combination.

When I get more time later this month, I'll post my ideas for the front garden, which was the area I was most excited about.

3 Days to Go - Green With Envy Garden Show

We've got 3 days to build the stand for the garden show, and what do you know - its going to rain for 2 of them! That's something I didn't bargain on, considering that we haven't had any rain in weeks. Things will get a little tricky tomorrow when it comes to the plastering of the wall.
I've finalised the design (I think?) but the finer details will get worked out as we go.

Our stand is under a beautiful Natal Fig, which should help keep some of the rain off our backs, but I'm going to have to get some kind of shelter set up for tomorrow. I guess the style would be leaning closer to Contemporary courtyard rather than French courtyard, but hopefully I can add some touches to the end that will tilt it back into France again?

Garden Show Planning

Today is a public holiday in South Africa - Youth Day. It commemorates the start of the Soweto Uprising in 1976, when school children were protesting against being taught in Afrikaans. The police opened fire on them and several children were killed and injured. This is the photo by Sam Nzima of the dying 12 year old Hector Pieterson, which became an iconic image of that day:

On a less serious note, I'm sitting down today to plan my stand at the Green With Envy Garden Show. The theme is "The French Courtyard". Fortunately thats a fairly open theme I think?

French Gardens are typically formal with topiary, ornate statuary, hedges and water features. But courtyards were generally less formal and were used for culinary purposes, for storing food plants and imported plants which could be given the extra attention they needed. So I think/hope there is a certain amount of freedom of interpretation.

This is my first sketch, the idea was meant to compare a more formal french style with a natural/indigenous style. They would be separated by a plant/moss filled crack. It didn't get the thumbs up from my wife (my best critic), so I'm moving on.

Looking Over The Garden Wall

I once took a test to see whether I used the right or left side of my brain, as an added extra the test told me that I am more visual than auditory.
I'm not sure how scientific it was, but it did make a certain amount of sense.

When I pick up a gardening book, most times I very casually skim read the text, preferring to absorb the pictures instead. This has always seemed the right way to approach the honing of my landscaping skills. Gardens are after all primarily a visual experience.

I've also always believed, that like plants and their ability to absorb water and nutrients, my natural ability to learn relies quite heavily on osmosis.

The absorbing of ideas through my eyes has been how I have learned most of what I know. I quickly get impatient with words, preferring to get to the real thing as fast as possible.
I would often look at planting, texture or colour combinations, and decide whether I liked them or not, and why.

I do believe that this is the best way to begin the learning experience as a landscaper. I think its the ideal foundation to lay to make your understanding of gardens as real and honest as possible.

But lately I have found myself drawn to words far more than I ever have in the past. Maybe its the influence of reading so many interesting thoughts in gardening blogs from people all over the world. Maybe its the act of writing this blog, and the discipline of having to put my thoughts down on paper.

It might also be the realisation that while pictures express so much to me, they may not be enough to try to communicate concepts or needs or reasons behind. And it is dawning on me that gardening as an Art, Science, Hobby, Language or even Need, has so much further to go in being accessible to people in general.

We have such a rich heritage and history as gardeners, that it is easy to look at the art of gardening as complete or mature. If I look back at history, and the growth and development of gardens, I could quite naturally compare it to an old man - wise, experienced and learned, but with little space left for new ideas or experimentation. All the ideas are already thought of, with any freshness coming from re-hashing old concepts.

But I keep getting a flash of the truth: that if we choose to look past what we have learnt, and know already, and up over the garden wall, there is a whole world of new ideas beyond.