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How I built my vertical garden

Darren
Making a Splash

How I built my vertical garden

Before-After2_web.jpg

I like vertical gardens. Problem is I don’t particularly like the plastic ones that are everywhere at the moment; and I can’t afford to pay someone to build me one. So I decided to make my own – here’s how I did it, screw ups (there were plenty) and all.

 

The wall

This wall is at the rear of our house, it’s part of an extension built sometime during the 80s. Since we recently built a new deck we’re spending more time outside and this plain wall has become a bit of an eyesore. It needed something.

 

The plan

Originally I wanted to use reinforced mesh for the structure – it looks great and it’s durable. But then I realised that I can’t weld and gaffer tape and cable ties aren’t exactly rock solid, so mesh was out.

 

Timber, however, is a different story. I ended up settling on a simple design – some shelves with 17 cm terracotta pots. Supporting the shelves I used some L brackets – these ones came in a nice satin black, which ties in perfectly with our fascia, guttering and window frames.

 

Shelf-with-measurements_web.jpg

 

Measure up

‘Measure twice, cut once’ they say. I tried that but I still messed it up. Turns out the pot that I was basing my measurements on was a slightly different diameter to the bulk lot of pots (30 in all) that I bought. So, the 30 holes I cut with the jigsaw? Wrong. All wrong. I ended up having to make them all a bit bigger to accommodate the slightly larger pots. Lesson learnt.

 

So I started re-cutting the holes. It was at this point that I snapped my one and only jigsaw blade while re-cutting the first hole. No back up blade? Yep, another rookie mistake. I’m now an expert with a jigsaw and I have a big packet of blades so I’ll never run out mid-way through a job again.

 

You can check out the measurements I used (above), hopefully it saves you some time.

 

oiling-shelves.jpg

 

Oil vs Paint

Recently I oiled our deck and it turned out pretty good (just don’t mention the drips down the side). So I figured I’d oil the shelves – what could go wrong? Plenty.

 

First, I bought a cheap brush (mistake No.1), then I rushed the job (mistake No.2) and ended up with drips and some areas darker than others. It looked bad. I knew it looked bad because when I asked my wife what she thought she just kind of nodded, smiled and walked off. Never a good sign.

 

So to cover my gaffe I undercoated with an oil-based undercoat then carefully applied two coats of satin black paint with a roller. An expensive roller.

 

The finish was much better, check it out in the picture below.

 

black-and-white-shelves_web.jpg

 

A little support

Next step was to screw the brackets to the brick wall. I used a 6mm masonry bit, two to be exact – half way through drilling holes I managed to snap the first one. It’s still embedded about an inch in the wall. I also used some 5mm plastic spaghetti and some 75mm screws.

 

The trickiest part here was getting the brackets lined up in a straight line. To do this I clamped a couple of stakes either side of the first L bracket to ensure the one above it was held securely in place while I drilled the holes (see below).

 

clamps-and-brackets_web.jpg

 

Get it together

Now for the fun part. I attached the shelves with some 18mm screws, added a packer between the bracket and the shelf where necessary to get them perfectly horizontal, and dropped in the pots.

 

Done.

 

I still haven’t quite decided what to plant in the pots – any suggestions?

 

final_web.jpg

 

What’s the damage?

All up it cost around $200 (plants will cost more and I already had the paint). It took me a couple of days to build but no doubt you could do it much quicker by avoiding the mistakes I made!

 

Here’s what I used:

5mm plastic spaghetti

6mm masonry bit

75mm screws

18mm screws

Packers

235 x 19mm x 1.8m Premium Grade Dressed Pine x 5

150x175x25x6mm angle brackets x 6

17 cm terracotta pot x 30

Undercoat

Black paint

Roller 

 

 

Darren
Making a Splash

Re: How I built my vertical garden

Hi @Anan, yes I did give a watering system some thought. But in the end I decided against installing one as I wanted to keep the look of the garden clean. The only downside to this is that regular watering is required to keep everying alive! Good luck with your vertical garden - a watering wand might help you to water in any hard-to-reach places.

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