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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.
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Signing UpStep 1Get 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.
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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.
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?
L
Gavin