Green Wall

I recently completed this green wall, which was inspired by this vertical garden made from a reclaimed pallet. This is actually the second version and, as I rebuilt it, I documented the process as follows:

This was version 1.0 right as I started dismantling it. I used reclaimed 2x3s from the house across the street and reclaimed tongue and groove sub-floor from our carriage house for the slats, which you can see stacked up in the background. The problem with this one is that I filled it with soil like they did in the linked website above but, as I learned afterwards, this method results in the soil moving slowly downward and compacting the bottom portion over time.

Here you can see all of the succulents removed and most of the soil. The black layers at the bottom are landscape fabric on the inside and pond liner for waterproof-ness on the outside.

I used only a few slats along the back as if it were a pallet and then stapled the two layers to those. This resulted in some bulging as I tried to move it around, which made it feel somewhat unstable.

So I removed the rear slats and cut a piece of plywood to fit from a pallet I found on the street. I screwed it on temporarily for fit.

I then removed the plywood and added two new layers of pond liner and landscape fabric between the plywood and the frame.

I folded the two backing layers towards the front at the bottom and screwed on the bottom slat. The I trimmed the two backing materials on all sides.

This time I created little planter shelves for each row using ripped T&G and fence boards. I screwed the slats to these and then attached the slats back to their original spots.

This shows each level with their shelves.

To hang it on the wall I made a french cleat from a piece of 2x3 and added a 2x3 spacer at the bottom.

For the soil I thought I could just fill the cupped portion but that does't allow the succulents to project out. So I laid the whole thing flat and filled the cupped portion plus the space above it and planted the succulents into the space above. You need to let the succulents take root so that they don't fall out. Theoretically the succulents should grow upwards and the roots should move downwards into the cupped portion and hold the soil completely together. I probably only waited a couple weeks before hanging it, although it could have probably used a little more time.

For the succulents, I got all of them at Home Depot. They sell small succulents for $2 each and each row has six. That adds up with eight rows but almost everything else was free so material-wise it was around $100 or so. You could mix and match for a different look but I like the uniformity of each row having the same succulent so every time I went to Home Depot I would check the selection and see if they had six of something I liked. It took time to assemble all of the rows but well worth it.