Vertical Farm: perspective of development

Starting from the intuition of Patrick Blanc, many architects and garden designers have begun to design vertical gardens (or vegetable walls) in urban areas and suburban, with aesthetic and ecological purposes.

It is necessary first of all to clarify the difference between green walls, that have growing media supported on the face of the wall, and the green facades, that have soil in a container or in ground only at the base of the wall.

There are various system to realize the green walls, which can be indoor or outdoor, of differenet measures and with freestanding supports or attached to an existing wall. They are generally built with modular panels hold by growing media, which can be of different type: shelves, bottles, containers, bags, sacks, or supports as coir fiber, felt mats, semi-open cell polyurethane sheet that are easily handled for maintenance and replacement. From the artisanal point of view are made creative green wall with various media fantasy, giving the green an original tone.

In addition to their high decorative value, the green walls offer several environmental benefits, as they improve the thermal insulation of the building to which they are combined, help to capture the fine dust, reduce noise pollution and glare, as they absorb the sound and light waves.

Species of ornamental plants suitable to be used for green walls change depending on climate and environmental factors in which they are: the most usual are the microthermal (fescue, perennial lolium, poa pratensis etc…) and macrotherm, indicated for warmer climates (such as couch grass), but many others can be chosen according to their color rendering. Suffice to say that Patrick Blanc for Oasis d'Aboukir Paris has used 7,600 plants of 250 different varieties on an area of 25 meters.

Typically they prefer varieties with low maintenance, needing little care and sporadic interventions during the year.
Recently in the major cities it has spread the interest in domestic vertical gardens, which give the possibility to produce vegetables even when you do not have land available. A vertical garden makes it possible to grow plants in quite small places using the height of the outdoor spaces.

There are many plants that we can grow, to be chosen according to the weather conditions: herbs, lettuce, radicchio, arugula, berries, but also kale, cabbage, broccoli, beans, peas, tomatoes, and even melons.
At the Expo 2015 in Milan the United States have realized in their pavilion a vertical garden of the length of a football field and designed by a team of architects led by James Biber.