Living Wall Celtic Cross, Copper & Grass

Living Wall, Celtic Cross, copper & grass

Here is a small living wall I made with grass & copper.  Vertical green for the urban core.

Living Walls, Celtic Cross Fabricated Using DIY Recycled Material

Here is a green wall I easily and inexpensively constructed from recycled materials.

The wall is four feet wide by five feet tall and fashioned out of rigid recycled plastic milk jug crates for the rear and side structural support.

The growing media is mineral wool and the celtic cross cut from old copper gutter sheet.

The Florida Green Anoles absolutely love it, providing them with habitat to escape the larger exotic predators here, the Cuban anoles.

Bringing Urban Green back to the cities doesn't have to be complicated and require high tech materials engineering or mechanical systems.

Recycled material technology is a sustainable approach to take when implementing Urban Green.

Easy Florida Living Wall

Yesterday we posted a note about a struggling living wall.  Yet living walls, if planned properly, can be easy too.

Ficus punila, living wall Tallahassee

Florida Living Wall, Low maintenance 

Living walls such as those pictured here provide many benefits, including; stormwater attenuation, urban heat island effect mitigation, carbon sequestration, air purification, beauty and wildlife habitat.

This particular wall provides a home to a large population of our native Florida Anoles.  Florida Anoles need vertical green above one meter or so to escape the larger, more predatory Cuban Anole and themselves are an important pest control species as their diet includes flies, roaches and other bugs.

Creeping fig, ficus pumila is a drought tolerant vine and although it is not a Floria native it does not exhibit significant invasive characteristics.  More information on the creeping fig vine is available on the UF IFAS website here.

The vine is planted in urban soils amended with organic matter at the base of a concrete wall surrounding the gasoline station.

Soil preparation is crucial when considering a living wall.

Trees = Living Wall, Urban Greening in Small Spaces

You can add an amazing amount of vertical green in very small city spaces.

Living Wall using containerized fruit trees

Smaller urban trees can serve to shade walls, provide habitat, produce food, clean stormwater and so much more.  And the concrete does not have to be busted up to allow the trees to grow and prosper.

The photos included here are of a very small lot in a small urban core (downtown) trailer park.  The owner has created a living wall/forest with food trees.  Citrus, figs and fruit trees line the western exposure wall of the trailer.

Florida Living Wall, Urban Greening in small spaces using trees

If even a small portion of all the trailers, small houses and apartments with balconies create living walls from containerized plants, we'd see such a huge improvement to Urban Core air quality and heat island effect while butterflies, bees and dragonflies swarmed about.

Scaleability and cost effectiveness are huge components of a successful Urban Core Greening program.

We can all learn from this example, go home and do the same, creating a living wall with containerized citrus, fig and fruit trees.