New Forms Of Vertical Gardening

Having completed the improvement of their gardens and parks, the Europeans began to build gardens “vertically”. In recent years, vertical gardening, roof gardens and other ventures of tireless landscape designers are in great fashion in Europe. An echo of this fashion is hanging pots and baskets, as well as vertical flower beds and flower towers.

Let's start with what has already become firmly established by domestic flower growers. Everywhere - in cities and in suburban areas - you can see hanging baskets with ampel flowers. In recent years, they have become as much a hallmark of the average country house design as the green lawns in front of the house.

Traditional hanging baskets are made from plastic-coated wire. The inside of the basket is lined with a special material made from coconut fibers, wool or wood processing waste. All these materials hold the soil well and do not allow moisture to pass through. Slits are made on the side and plants are planted there, which form a spectacular blooming ball.

If there is no special material at hand, the flower basket can be lined with a layer of sphagnum moss. This bedding looks very natural. Solid baskets of wicker branches are often used, but it is difficult to plant plants in them from the side.

The main problem with "hanging" flower beds is the rapid drying of the soil. Therefore, only drought-resistant plants can be planted in them, for example, ivy pelargonium, ampelous varieties of petunias, verbena, as well as a number of new ampelous plants that have recently appeared on sale. It is useful to add special granules to the ground with which you fill the container, which are capable of accumulating moisture. Thanks to this, plants planted in a basket will suffer less from drying out of the soil.

If today you will not surprise anyone with a hanging basket, then a vertical flower bed or a flower tower can still be considered a relatively new word in domestic floriculture.

It is easy to arrange a vertical flower bed yourself. Take 4 pegs and hammer them into the ground. Then join the plastic coarse mesh with the black lutrasil and secure it to the pegs. The resulting container is filled with earth, and two tubes are inserted inside for watering the plants. Seedlings are planted from the side in the lutrasil incisions. It can be not only flowers, but also strawberries, herbs, ornamental vegetables. Although you have to tinker, but the result will not be ashamed to boast to your neighbors.

And finally, the latest trend in flower fashion is the so-called flower tower. It consists of a plastic bag with a diameter of 20-30 cm, which ends with a bowl at one end, and with a hanging hook at the other. The bag is filled with soil, and holes are cut in the walls for planting flowers. Water this flower structure through a container located at the base of the flower tower. In European garden centers, these towers are sold ready-made. Let's hope that they will appear with us soon.

Based on materials from the magazines "Household economy" and "Floriculture"