Vertical Garden from Free Recycled Styrofoam

Vertical Gardens aka Living Walls can look absolutely stunning. You can have a garden growing right up your wall indoors or outside.
Grocery stores get some of their food shipped in 100% food safe styrofoam boxes that work perfectly for making your vertical garden. This instrucable will show you how to make a vertical garden that's modular, easy to water and has endless options for making world-class frames for your vertical garden. It's basically made out of a styrofoam box and a cheap non-toxic easy to use coating. 

I’ve also included some different options you have in building a living wall so that adds to the length of the instructable.

First you’ll need the following:
*For some of the foam supplies, you can go to livingwallart.com 
**Disclaimer: Livingwallart.com is actually my blog and I have the diy plan listed there as well... but I wanted to add an instructable here as well because I thought people would find it useful. The supplies I used to build this you can also get at www.hwff.com. They're the manufacturer of the foam coat... I just made it easy to order (for the same price) off the blog so if you like the plan and want to support the blog, you can get it at livingwallart.com as well.

• Foam - Step 1 gives more specifics
• Foam Coat - A non-toxic easy-to-apply coating that adheres to foam and makes a hard casing. Cleans up with water.
• Boost or Bounce - A liquid that can be added to the foam coat to make it waterproof. It’s non-toxic
• Foam Fusion – A liquid glue that won’t melt foam over time. It takes a bit to set, but once it sets it’s waterproof and will go the distance.
• Something to cut the foam with – A hot wire foam cutter will slice through foam like butter and there’s no foam pellets to clean up after. An X-Acto knife will work, and you could even use a knife from the kitchen, but foam will be flying everywhere – you were warned =)
• Paint brush or putty knife/drywall trowel and tupperware container.
• Paint - if you so desire. The natural colour is a very light tan. Painting it also helps make it more waterproof.
• Plants and potting soil
• Two screws, two anchors, a ruler and a drill – all for hanging it.

 

Step 1: Get the foam

Get the foam! - Your two options are to go the recycling way and the regular buy at the store way.

• The recycling way - go to your local grocery store and go to the meat/fish area. Meat and fish are typically delivered in FDA approved 100% food safe foam boxes and will typically be thrown out. All you need to do is ask someone behind the counter . My grocery store typically has about 5-6 boxes they throw out everyday before 5:00 pm. The boxes vary in size and I try to get the boxes around 9″ x 24″ x 6″ and have a lid. After you get them, just rinse them in soap and water to clean them out and let them dry and you can to go step 2.
  

  One of many sizes you can get for free

• If you go the regular buy-at-the-store-way, you should be able to find the foam you need at Home Depot. Often times it’s around the insulation section of the store. The Home Depot here allows you to buy sheets of white EPS foam. EPS foam is the best to work with typically, but you’re welcome to try other types. You need to then make a box around 9″ x 24″ x 6″ in size.

Comments

[HelenaTroy]

I'm a member of an online gardening site, Grows on You (international membnership, worth checking out!) - we've been talking about using polystyrene boxes, but putting concrete or hypertufa around them, inside and out, for strength and looks. It does make them a bit heavy, but the polystyrene is buried inside, it's only used as something to hang the textured inner and outer layers on. There are lots of hypertufa how-to sites around - too many, I've got confused!

[Alabastorian]

Just a public health notice:

Do not apply chemicals or heat to foam in any space that is not very well ventilated. The the resulting airborne chemicals can make you very very sick.

[blauschmetterling]

Is foam really the best thing to use? I've tried using foam trays as drip pans and every plant on the foam has died. Styrofoam is highly reactive and will actually disintegrate when exposed to certain substance.

[l8nite]

Some of us are to dense to follow along with all the instructions if there aren't any pictures.  Others like to look at the pictures first then if they can't figure it out read the instructions( or in the case of some of the electical ibles to see if its beyond our skill)......... I fit all 3.....Its a shame because you did a LOT of typing!  Personally I'd like to see the boxes you'r referring to, how you apply the sealer, how to attach the boxes and how to fill them

[isupereco]

 Sorry l8nite. I will try to get  picture of the boxes I used. To be honest, you could use different sizes depending on how you want your vertical garden to look. I will try to get pictures of the size I used though.
As far as the sealer goes, I used the foam glue and applied a bead of glue all around the lid. Then I just put the lid on the box and it sealed together. The foam glue is waterproof. I could try to get a picture of that as well.
I didn't attach the boxes to each other. I have three hanging in a row, but I just hung one on top of the other. They're not attached.
When you say fill them, you mean the step where you fill them with the soil and plants? What pictures would you like to see?

[isupereco]

 I got to thinking after I left that comment that I should've declared that in the first place. I added some new info front and center on the intro page so it's easy to see that that's my blog.

[lemonie]

You might have changed the wording a bit, but it's essentially a copy of this page and you haven't any pictures of you doing it. Did you make one?

L

[isupereco]

 Yes, you're right. That's actually my blog. I thought I'd add an instructable here as well as having the diy page on my website. I didn't know exactly how to do it... but the pictures are from the one I have in my house.. and the diy on the website and the instructable is the same. 

Gavin