GREEN GOES VERTICAL
For homeowners who love the serenity of being surrounded by nature, a living wall might be the garden they've been searching for.
Since 2008, Patrick Poiraud and the company he cofounded, Green Over Grey, have been planting the seeds of indoor architectural gardens across the Lower Mainland.
Living walls and vertical gardens are a new method of adding a layer of insulation, reducing air pollution, and softening acoustics by adding a wall of plants.
"We are designers and what we want to do is create... not just covering a wall with a blob of plants but doing something interesting in terms of art," Poiraud says.
Including design, consultation, and installation, the living walls tend to cost between $100 and $130 a square foot.
The green walls are generally designed to wrap around an existing wall, leaving about four centimetres between the existing wall and the new green wall.
A waterproof board made of recycled material is attached to a steel frame. With the aid of lighting and an automatic irrigation system, many varieties of plants sprout on the board.