Growing up.

Living in London with limited space I guess it is no surprise that I have been interested in vertical planting in its various forms. It started having seen photos of villages in Spain where the walls of the courtyards are covered with pots. Cordoba is the most famous, where every year there is a festival when the courtyards are open to visitors. We went on holiday there a couple of years ago, but unfortunately missed the festival so had to be satisfied with the courtyards on the hotel and bars and restaurants. I started to look at my ugly fences as an opportunity and last summer started putting up strips of wood or battens along the visible fences. I had several home made attempts (far too embarrassing for photos) at attaching pots to these battens, but finally found a couple of companies who supply purpose built rings that attach  to trellis. The one I tend use now is the Spanish Rings. Over the last year I have got a few of these and the fences are starting to fill up.

They also do a pipe ring, which I have used on posts.  This one is my "manfreda tree" and has most of my manfredas and mangaves.

Lately I have seen a lot more vertical planting in the form of walls, firstly at a one of my favourite nurseries, Urban Jungle in Norwich . They have been experimenting with more affordable ways of building a planted wall, and in the end settled on battens and cloth.  They have described it more fully in their Blog.  This seems a very simple solution and even when we saw it in it's early days it looked amazing (although a little fluffy for my garden).

Most recently someone directed me to a site, Flora's Blog, showing some amazing pictures of framed vertical planting.  I love the pictures (and who wouldn't want a bathroom like the one shown at the bottom of that page!).  I think sempervivums come into their own when used like that.

Maybe now is the time to be a bit more adventurous with my vertical planting.