In his post New Vertical Garden Comes to Spain’s San Vicente, Alex wrote “Vertical gardens are here to stay.” Our editor in chief wondered if there was a contradiction here with our post yesterday Fix Our Horizontal Farms Before We Go Vertical, where I questioned the merits of vertical farming.
I pointed out that vertical farms, designed for food production, were a very different thing from living walls, which I thought Alex incorrectly called a vertical garden. But he is not alone; we did it in Madrid Gets a Vertical Garden Too and Ugly Cooling Tower Gets Vertical Garden Makeover in Spain. (Interestingly, all Spanish projects)
Living Walls
Properly, these Spanish projects installations should probably be called “living walls” rather than vertical gardens. Vancouver landscape architect Randy Sharp explains in Azure:
Patrick Blanc, the botanist who popularized the living wall, calls it Le Mur Végétal, or Plant Wall. It is usually fed by hydroponics and often uses no soil at all.
Green Façades
As noted by Sharp above, green facades have their roots in the ground and do not require pumps or technology to keep them alive. Édouard François has built a number of these; see Visiting Architect Édouard François In Paris
Harvest Green: Vertical Farm by Romses Architects wins Competition
Vertical Farms
Vertical Farms are, according to Dr Dickson Despommier, urban highrises devoted to producing food. Hewrites in an essay:
All of these terms are pretty clear; the term “Vertical garden” is not, as gardens can be used either for ornamental, decorative purposes or for food production. Perhaps the term should be retired.
