Vertical gardening is having a moment right now, and we love it. If you’re on the fence about going vertical with your gardening, we did a little digging for some great reasons to give it a try.
1. You don't have a lot of space to work with
If you’re limited in the amount of space you have — outside or in — vertical gardening might be just the thing. After all, ‘traditional’ horizontal gardening can take up a lot of square footage, but if you go up, the sky’s the limit. Pole beans, anyone? (But do bear in mind your maximum comfortable height for watering, maintenance and harvesting.) For apartment dwellers, vertical gardening can allow you to make the most of a small outdoor space like a balcony or a rooftop.
If you don’t have access to an outdoor space for your garden, fear not — small stature houseplants and herbs are great fits for indoor vertical gardens. If you have a space in your home that gets good light, you can create a small kitchen herb garden with hanging pots, or even turn a wall in your living room into a living wall of flowering plants.
2. You want to try something different
Perhaps you’ve had a traditional garden for some time now, and you think you might like to try something new. Take a look around. Maybe that gate in your fence would look lovely framed in some climbing roses, you could just see it with an archway above it. Or, there’s that one corner of the yard that just doesn’t grow well — the sun just doesn’t angle nicely into it, or you simply cannot get its soil to play along. Try going up — trellises, landscape fabric, hanging buckets or tiered hanging baskets, even a salvaged wooden ladder leaned against a fence can help you take advantage of your garden’s conditions and constraints. As long as the material you’re planting in is plant-friendly, you’re in business.
3. You want to make something artful
We saw one clever gardener (thank you, Pinterest), who’d turned the first letter or their name into a gorgeous vertical garden floral monogram. Isn’t that a great idea? We think so. There are so many ways you can get creative with vertical gardening, and the opportunity to turn your gardening into art is bountiful.
4. You like the idea of repurposing or upcycling
From wooden pallets to salvaged rain gutters to wooden ladders, empty plastic bottles, or even the drawers of old wooden dresser — with a little imagination, if it can hold a plant and some soil, it can be used to make a vertical garden. As a secondary benefit of course, it’s nice to help the earth by giving a second life to something that might otherwise end up in a landfill.
5. It's not easy for you to crouch or kneel
We’ll be honest here, this might be our favourite reason to get into vertical gardening. It hadn’t really occurred to us until we started to think it through, but when you go up with your gardening, you’re not required to kneel or crouch to (let’s say) inspect your plants for pests or disease, or to weed, or to water…or to simply admire their wonderfulness. So if kneeling or crouching isn’t something that’s comfortable for you, vertical gardening might be the perfect solution.
Of course, these are just a few reasons to get into vertical gardening. We’d love to hear about your upward planting adventures — inspire us!
