A Question of Balance

November 16, 2010
Green Living, Home & Garden, Lifestyle, Nature & Outdoors, Publications

It was a graphic designer, rather than a gardener who created the living walls that play a large part in this exciting Kirstenbosch exhibit. Roy George reveals how he did it..

Through the ages people with limited space and a passionate desire for a garden have come up with all sorts of ways to grow plants vertically (ivy-covered walls, up trellises, in hanging baskets, over archways), but at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in Cape Town, an innovative project is taking vertical gardening to a whole new level.

Here you’ll discover an unexpected structure including a large green framework where plants have grown together to form a living wall. Step inside and you’ll find maquettes of the large sculptures by sculptor Dylan Lewis that will be exhibited throughout the gardens.

Entitled Untamed, this project is a collaboration between Dylan, architect Enrico Daffonchio and psychologist/psychiatrist Ian McCallum, which looks at restoring the balance between humans and nature.

A board next to the building explains that this year-long exhibit explores ideas around the importance of the natural world to humankind’s psyche, and develops the notion that there may be painful psychological and spiritual consequences of mankind’s destruction of the wilderness.

The building itself is a temporary structure designed to be moved after the exhibit ends in July 2011 and rebuilt somewhere else in the country.

Wanting to find out more about the green walls and tipped off by Dylan’s office that Roy George was the person to speak to, we met him on site at Kirstenbosch. Roy, a graphic designer, has worked with Dylan for about six years, travelling around the world to build his exhibition spaces.
He was working in London when Dylan called him about the project. Roy had seen green walls used to screen construction sites around London and investigated using this existing system.

“A Canadian company plants and grows the walls off-site before selling them to the construction company. However they used European plants and we wanted indigenous plants, so their system wasn’t feasible,” he explains.

There are green wall systems in South Africa, but Roy felt that as they were planted into a mesh, they took too long to look good and he decided to come up with a better system himself. “I was drinking out of a plastic bottle one day and realised that I could cut it in half, plant a single plant in it, and hang it on a wall. I wanted to use recycled materials, so the bottles would be perfect,” he says.

“In the European system the panels need to be replaced every two years or so, but the beauty of this system is that if one plant dies, then you can replace it.” It took Roy two days to get hold of 15 000 bottles and then the wall began to take shape.
Kirstenbosch advised the team on what to plant. “We needed to know what would grow out enough and mat into the neighbouring plants to cover the wall,” explains Roy. “It’s not only about colour, but also about the texture of the plants.”
Working with a nursery, Roy’s system is being developed as a domestic product; you can buy a ready-made wall panel with or without plants from a company called Grow-Up. The steel structure at Kirstenbosch was especially engineered, so it’s not easy to replicate at home, but in case you want to try, Roy was happy to show us how his system works.

Building a green wall Step by Step

Collect a number of two-litre soft drink bottles that have a groove in the base. Anything smaller will not be able to hold enough soil to nourish the plant for a suitable length of time.
Cut the bottles in half at an angle. Fill them with some soil and plant each with a plant of your choice.
Build a wall consisting of two parallel metal frames (joined at intervals to keep them upright) with squares big enough to hold a single bottle. Position the wall where it is sheltered from wind, but receives adequate sunlight. Rest the bottles between the two frames with the base sitting on the inner framework. The bottles are supported well by the frame, but Roy uses a clip just to make sure they don’t shift.
Water the plants regularly, by hand or via an irrigation system.

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