Caption: Free-standing vertical gardens can be set up anywhere. Attribution: Karen Highland (Flickr)
Vertical gardens are a smart gardening solution when space is limited or you wish to add uniqueness to your landscape. Many vegetables, herbs, and flower varieties can be successfully grown vertically, creating a wall of beautiful colors. Here, you’ll find 16 great reasons to grow a vertical garden.
1. Use Less Space
Lack of space is why many gardeners choose to create a vertical garden. Vertical gardens can be created along walls or can be made in freestanding structures.
2. Reduce Strain on the Body
As you get older, it can become more difficult to spend time on your knees or bending over, tending to your garden. A vertical garden allows you to care for your plants at a comfortable height.
3. Create a Habitat
Beneficial birds and insects are often attracted to vertical gardening areas. These gardens act as a natural habitat for many creatures.
4. Grow a Wall for Privacy
Various plants can be used to fill in a wall, which provides privacy and a filter for noise. Privacy walls can also be used to hide unsightly structures, such as an old garden shed.
5. Keep Plants Alive All Year Long
Vertical garden systems that contain containers allow plants to thrive all year long. Choose a mobile structure and wheel your vertical garden indoors when the weather gets too cold.
6. Less Time and Work
It can be difficult to keep up with garden maintenance. A vertical garden has less soil, meaning less watering is needed and weeding only takes minutes.
7. Ward Off Pests and Diseases
Pests and the diseases they carry often find it more difficult to flourish in vertical gardens due to an increase in air circulation and breezier winds. Larger creatures, such as rabbits, are also less likely to scale a vertical garden.
8. Reduce Carbon Footprint
Help reduce your carbon footprint. The plant life found in a vertical garden helps clean the outdoors of harmful air pollutants and fuel emissions.
9. Boost Curb Appeal
Unlike a garden on the ground that is not easily seen from afar, vertical gardens improve the beauty and appeal of your home from far away and close up.
10. Pull Fewer Weeds
As many types of vertical gardens use no soil at all, weeds are not as likely to grow. Fewer weeds mean less maintenance for the gardener.
11. Save Money
There are numerous ways you can save money with a vertical garden, such as using less soil and water. The need for protective garden boxes is also eliminated.
12. Replacement of Plants is Easy
Replacing a single plant is a cinch with a vertical garden. Plants are even assessable by individuals in wheelchairs.
13. Improve Air Quality
Plants can improve air quality and thus your health by removing dangerous volatile organic compounds and other pollutants from the air.
14. Double Your Yield
Make use of vertical space and better light and air circulation to yield double or even triple your normal vegetable yield.
15. Reuse Other Materials
Instead of paying to get rid of old items in your backyard, such as wooden pallets, use them to grow your vertical garden.
16. Naturally Insulate an Exterior Wall
Vertical gardens filled with plants can naturally insulate an exterior wall. The key to effective insulation is to have full wall coverage.