Plants have found a home on walls for centuries, but are sometimes incongruous with architecture, often breaking down the structural integrity of a building’s facade. Patrick Blanc’s Vertical Garden System, known as Le Mur Vegetal in French, allows both plants and buildings to live in harmony with one another. The botanist cum vertical landscape designer is probably best know for his gorgeous living wall on the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris (shown above). But Blanc’s Vertical Garden System can be implemented anywhere: indoors or out and in any climatic environment.
The three-part system consists of a PVC layer, felt, and metal frame, providing a soil-free self-supporting system light enough to be hung on the wall, and even suspended in the air, weighing in at less than 30 kilograms per square meter.
The Vertical Garden can be used as an impressive outdoor system, or can be used indoors, with the help of artificial lighting. The natural benefits of the Vertical Garden are many: improved air quality, lower energy consumption, providing a natural shield between weather and inhabitants. No matter where you live, urban or suburban, cold or hot, indoors or out, the Vertical Garden brings a little bit of green to all.
Read more: Patrick Blanc’s Vertical Gardens (Inhabitat)
Patrick Blanc has always been fascinated by plants. He was a child he created his first tropical aquarium filled with exotic species.
As a teenage student, the French botanist visited Malaysia and Thailand and noticed how plants grew vertically up cliffs, with their roots spreading inside the mosses on the rocks.
Blanc tried to imitate what he had seen when he returned home. He covered walls with old clothes and encouraged plants to take root and climb, with the aid of an irrigation system at the top of the installation. He called it Mur Vegetale, the Vertical Garden.
Mr Blanc has created hundreds of vertical gardens around the world, including a vertical Orchid Show, which has opened at the New York botanical garden.
Walking among 4,500 blooming orchids and 30,000 plants - while wearing green shirt, shoes and even green hair - Mr Blanc told the BBC about his passion for design.
The 'vertical gardener' on creating urban rainforests (BBC)
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