Vertical Gardening Feature in Straits Times Life!

There was an extensive feature on vertical gardening in Singapore in the Straits Times Life! section yesterday. Vertical gardening is something that most Singaporeans can easily perceive since decades ago, our dwellings have gone skywards to make the best use of limited land in our island state.

Vertical gardening is the growing of plants on the vertical surfaces, be it on the wall of a home or something that is larger like the facade of a building. It is more than just aesthetics. Vertical greenery can help to cool buildings, thereby the reducing the need and cost of expensive air-conditioning. Plants also help to soften the hard and cold look of concrete that is used to construct our ‘concrete jungle’ in highly urbanised Singapore.

On the leftmost corner of the Straits Times main section, one of my vertical gardens with airplants on it was featured.

 The coverage on vertical gardening featured both hobbyist and commercial set-ups. For those of us who have followed the Community in Bloom Awards last year, we would have guessed that Mr Albert Quek’s set-up is one that would naturally appear in the feature story in the hobbyist vertical gardens portion. Indeed, Albert’s vertical garden was featured, together with two smaller photographs that showed how one can do something similar using bamboo sticks.

The cover page of Straits Times Life! section showing the feature story of the day.

I am honoured to be the next hobbyist who was featured in the story. My vertical gardens were inspired by Andrew Tan’s set-up which I first got to see it last December when I had the privilege of an invitation to visit his home. Andrew used an aluminium window grille in this vertical garden. For me, I recruited my Dad to help me in the construction of my vertical garden where he used laundry bamboo poles to make a grid that served the same purpose as the metal one used by Andrew.

I am honoured to have my two vertical gardens featured in the story. The larger vertical garden which had many airplants (Tillandsia spp.) perched on pieces of driftwood secured to the bamboo frame was shown on the first page of the main section of the Straits Times! I have noticed quite a lot of vertical gardens are rather ‘flat’ in their design and I thought I should just secure pieces of contorted driftwood onto the rather flat bamboo frame so as to achieve a naturalistic look where the branches can ‘grow outwards’ from the wall. I would then perch airplants on some of these branches.

The first page of the story and the vertical garden that was featured was mine which is a very simple set-up that can be done by securing decorative containers into a bamboo frame.

I also did a smaller version using the same framework but I secured small decorative containers onto the frame. The containers are very cheap and are bonded to the framework using cable ties. I would then slot in various plants grown in pots into these containers. Whenever the plants decline, I can easily take them out and swop with new ones. In my current set-up, I used peperomias which is a group of plants that I like every much due to their differing leaf shapes, texture and colour as well as various varying growth habits. 

The second page of the story that showed Veera’s set-up as well as the modular system that is available for purchase from Far East Flora. The vertical garden at Changi Airport’s Terminal 3 was also featured.

For those of us who do not want to spend too much time making his/her own vertical garden, one can go buy a modular system called ‘Minigarden’ that is available from Far East Flora. Each module has three pockets and one can easily slot in a plant into each pocket. Each module can then be stacked up to a desired height.

For larger set-ups, it is best to consult a commercial company to help with the design and implementation. For this, Greenology’s wholly recycable ‘Green Envelope System’ was featured. It was designed by Veera, the boss of the company and comes with an irrigation system which is essential to provide water for a large set-up.