One of many ways to reintegrate nature into cities is creating vertical gardens …

The client has been inspired by Patrick Leblanc, a pioneer in this area, so he designed the system and asked us to help building it. So, suddenly, we were involved in a fantastic project to greenify a 7 x 3 concrete wall in an office in Burleigh Heads, QLD, Australia!!

The design was defined by the client and we started the building of a vertical garden on a concrete wall, with a fish tank at the bottom which in the future could turn into a full office aquaponics system.

Vertical gardens have multiple benefits (see HERE ) and this one was challenging, as it has a big area (7 x 3 m. tall), needed to last for a long time (very durable materials), had to withstand constant moisture and had limited sun light.

So, the building steps where more or less like these …

We built a fish tank.
Waterproofed the walls and put pond plastic to hold the water.
Attached panel holding bars to the walls to hold the growing panels in position and hold the plastic.
Built the panels with square galvanised steel.
We used PET reused plastic felt (recycled from PET plastic bottles), as the growing media in a hydroponics style setup.
Attached the felt, with stainless steel staples, to the hard foam panels.
Fixed the panel to the frames.
Put the frames in position and fixed them to the wall bars.
Installed plumbing, with holed pvc pipes running on top, below the felt.
Put a pump inside the fish tank to push the water upwards.
Installed the growing lights …