Humans need plants to survive.
We eat them, drink them, use them as medicine, and even decorate with them in order to bring joy to our daily lives.
Once you start caring for a couple of houseplants, it's easy to spiral into an obsession with our magnificent, leafy friends. If your collection of 20-plus houseplants isn't enough to satiate your need for greenery in your home anymore, why not take it to the next level with a full-blown living wall?
Living walls, or vertical gardens as they're sometimes called, are made up of an array of live plants that are planted vertically and can range in size from just a few square feet to entire walls in large atrium spaces.
However, larger installations can cost upwards of $125-$225 per square foot of wall and aren't exactly feasible for renters or homeowners who are on a strict budget or have limited space.
While you can certainly contract a company to install a living wall in your home, there are also local and handcrafted options to consider depending on your budget, your lifestyle and what look you're going for.
Dominic Villareal, the owner of A Modern Plantsman, weighed his own options when expanding his Colfax plant store to downtown Spokane in late 2021.
"My partner and I were scoping out the local plant scene, and we noticed immediately that there was a lack of living wall installations in Spokane," he says. "There are no plant stores or nurseries in the area that have one."
When Villareal secured the space for his shop on the main floor of the Hotel Indigo building, he began designing a plant wall that was eye-catching as well as functional for his customers. The plant wall, constructed by Villareal himself, features wooden shelves that are just deep enough to hide the pots that the plants reside in, giving it the appearance of a living wall.
"That's very doable for a home setting," he says. "You can take the pots off the shelf for easy watering and care."
Villareal recommends plants that trail for any DIY living wall project, but also says that including plants of different heights can give the wall a much more textured and varied appearance.
"Start with plants like pothos, heart leaf philodendrons and prayer plants," Villareal says. "Prayer plants specifically can deal with very low-light situations, which is perfect for a home installation. They'll disguise any nonnatural elements of the wall once they start to trail down."
Previous owner of Sage + Moss and seasoned houseplant parent Annecia Paulson recommends utilizing organic elements when creating your display for ease of watering and a more harmonious facade.
The most common way to do this is by creating mounted plant displays. Mounted plants are plants that have been affixed onto an object using moss or other organic materials.
"Creating mounted plants is actually a really easy process," she says. "You simply remove most of the dirt from the roots, place the plant on the piece of bark and then attach it using sphagnum moss and fishing line."
The upkeep and care of mounted plants lie in the choice of wood, Paulson says.
"Using cork bark is the best option — it's lightweight and naturally mold-resistant. Just soak the whole thing in water, let it drip dry and then hang it on your wall using Command hooks or string. Super simple," she says.
If the trial and error of diving in headfirst just isn't your thing, many area plant stores, including A Modern Plantsman, offer workshops on how to create mounted plants and products that can assist you in your journey to creating a living wall.
"We really try to act as a resource for people in the community," Villareal says. "We want to help people learn how to do these things. I've already gone through the trial and error of the projects that people attempt at home, so I'm happy to give people that knowledge." ♦
