Design a Vertical Planter or Living Wall
- Design Tips
- Vertical Planter Types
- Popular Plants for Vertical Planters or Living Walls
- Designing a Vertical Planter or Living Wall
- Related Webinars
Here is our recommended workflow for designing a vertical planter or living wall, including the planting, details, and irrigation components of the project.
Design Tips
We recommend starting with an analysis of the space for each wall, including:
- Sun orientation:
- North, South, East, West?
- If very tall or long, does the sun and shade change across the wall
- Microclimate:
- Milder next to a building?
- Wall exposed to or protected from wind?
- Humidity, Water Exposure:
- Under a roof overhang?
- Able to connect to downspouts?
- Strong enough support?
- Choose a type with past success:
- Go see a built wall that's been up 3+ years.
- Where is it now vs built?
- Note orientation, plants
- Anything die off?
- Plan for maintenance:
- Pest maintenance
- Adding back nutrients
- Take note of plant soil needs:
- High drainage? Avoid mold.
- Possible to add gravel for drainage, but watch for the added weight.
Vertical Planter Types
Living Walls
Living walls can:
- Consist of pots or trenches/pockets.
- Be staggered up.
- Hold perennials, annuals, or shrubs.
- Be part of a retaining wall.
- Include geotextile felts or panels, supporting soil and plants.
Green Façades
Green façades can:
- Include a trellis for climbers.
- Have pots at the top for hanging shrubs.
List of Established Systems (Non-Exhaustive)
- LiveWall
- Tournesol – VGP Tray Living Wall System
- SuitePlants Cassette Systems
- Sagegreenlife Vertical Garden Systems
- GSky® Plant Systems
- Florafelt Living Wall Products
- ANS Living Wall System
- LivePanel Living Wall Systems
- Cork Living Wall Systems
- Filtrexx® LivingWalls™
- Verdura® retaining wall system
Remember: Visit an established wall!
Popular Plants for Vertical Planters or Living Walls
Here are a few plants that are common choices for vertical planters or living walls.
Note that some living wall system providers will offer plant guides.
Edible Plants
- Basil – Ocimum basilicum
- Cilantro – Coriandrum sativum
- Radishes – Raphanus raphanistrum
- Beans – example: Phaseolus vulgaris
- Cucumbers – Cucumis sativus
- Alyssum – Lobularia maritima
- Pansies – Viola × wittrockiana
- Kale – Brassica oleracea
- Arugula – Eruca vesicaria
- Lettuces – Lactuca sativa
- Tomatoes – Solanum lycopersicum
- Thyme – Thymus vulgaris
- Strawberries – Fragaria × ananassa
- Chives – Allium schoenoprasum
- Squash – Cucurbita genus
- Peppers – Capsicum genus
- Chard – Beta vulgaris subsp. vulgaris
- Eggplant – Solanum melongena
- Lavender – Lavandula genus
- Cabbage – Brassica oleracea var. capitata
- Ginger – Zingiber officinale
- Lemon balm – Melissa officinalis
- Oregano – Origanum vulgare
- Parsley – Petroselinum crispum
- Celery – Apium graveolens
Tropicals
- Begonias – Begonia genus
- Ferns – Polypodiopsida class
- Croton – Codiaeum variegatum
- Bromeliad – Bromeliaceae family
- Lady fern – Athyrium filix-femina
- Japanese painted fern – Athyrium niponicum
- Japanese sword fern – Nephrolepis hirsutula
Cold-Climate Perennials
- Hosta (any variety) – Hosta genus
- Allium – Allium genus
Grasses
- Feather reed grasses – Calamagrostis acutiflora
- Autumn moor grass – Sesleria autumnalis
Succulents
- Graptoveria blue pearl – Graptoveria genus
- Mother of pearl plant – Graptopetalum paraguayense
- Moon silver succulent – Pachyphytum Oviferum
- Echeveria – Echeveria genus
- Sempervivum – Sempervivum genus
- Sedum – Sedum genus
Annual Flowers
- Impatiens – Impatiens genus
- Marigolds – Tagetes genus
- African daisy – Osteospermum genus
- Trailing chenille – Acalypha hispida
- Heliotrope – Heliotropium genus
- Geranium – Pelargonium genus
Designing a Vertical Planter or Living Wall
Designing the planting layout and type of wall is one thing, but you'll also need to document it accurately and clearly for a construction drawing set so it's built exactly as imagined. Here's a recommended workflow for connecting smart Land F/X plants with smart details and Reference Notes (RefNotes) for the quick drafting of the construction details for these walls.
Planting Plan and Details
1. Find your ideal living wall system List of established systems
2. Create plan and front elevation blocks.
You can either obtain these blocks from the manufacturer of the system you're using or draw them yourself and save them into our system using our Save Block tool.
If drawing the blocks yourself, you can base them on specifications from a manufacturer or on your own built system. You can also choose to model your vertical planting system in SketchUp and export the plan, elevation, and section blocks from there for use CAD, as shown in the Power Tip video linked above.
3. Place plan blocks (Plan Graphics) on your plan.
You can turn these blocks into RefNote Amenity blocks to be included in your RefNotes Schedule and hardscape totals.
4. Place elevation blocks (Elevation Graphics) to the side.
We recommend planning how you will number the wall sections beforehand and then organizing the elevation blocks according to that numbering. Leave enough room between the elevation blocks to fit the schedule and Detail Template.
5. Add plants to your Land F/X project to use in your living wall. Add the plants to the Shrubs category in the Pant Manager.
6. Place plants on the elevation blocks.
You can use the following tools as needed to place your plants quickly:
- Keyboard shortcuts (Plant Shotgun tools)
- Array tools
- Match Plant Properties
7. Place Detail Viewports around elevation blocks.
Take care to leave enough room to fit a Plant Schedule. Use our keyboard shortcuts to adjust the size and scale, and name the Detail Viewports accurately for each wall.
8. Place Work Areas around the Detail Viewports.
Set the Work Area scale to match the scale of the placed Detail Template. Matching these scales will ensure that:
- The Plant Schedule is limited to only what's within the detail and has an accurate schedule title, and
- The schedule or any callouts have the correct scale
9. Run a Plant Schedule for each living wall section.
Also take care to choose schedule options that will fit within your detail template.
When configuring your schedule, only include the Shrubs plant type. Select the option to include the Symbol for each shrub.
10. Place your Detail Viewports on detail layout sheets.
11. Call out the Detail Viewports on the planting plan.
Irrigation Plan
Ideally, your irrigation plan should be a new drawing with the planting design xrefed in. Both drawings should be assigned to the same Land F/X project.
1. Add drip equipment such as valves, emitters, and check valves.
You can use either individual drip emitters or Areas for Drip Emitters in this workflow – both will produce accurate calculations. Placing an Area for Drip Emitters is faster and easier, but also requires that your planting design allows you to assign a certain type of emitter based on the plant size. If you have a wide array of plant types in your planter that have extremely different irrigation needs, you might be best suited to use individual emitter symbols.
Also add pipe caps to the auxiliary equipment in your project. Edit the cap and change its symbol type to the CAP-PIPE-ID style to ensure it has a cap identifier number.
2. Determine demand for a single wall:
2A. Place drip emitters on the plants.
At this point, you're solely determining the demand for each row of the planter. Each plant is at the same elevation in the row, so you won't need to calculate elevation change yet. Start with the top row. If all rows have the same planting irrigation needs and you only need to make sure your system is sized correctly for the total flow, you'll only need to place emitters for this top row. If you need total equipment quanities in a final irrigation schedule, you'll need to place equipment on all rows but will only eventually size one sample row. If any rows will need a different number of emitters or different emitter types/sizes, you'll need to place and size for all the different rows.
2B. Place temporary valves on sample rows.
2C. Draw lateral pipe (the pipe class you have assigned to drip emitters), connecting the temporary valve to the emitters in the single row.
2D. Size the lateral pipe to determine the demand for the rows.
Place a valve callout at this point, then run a Valve schedule to determine the demands for the temporary valves. Place this schedule above the detail viewport.
2E. Add and place pipe caps at each row, assigning them with the demands you determined when sizing the lateral pipes.
If a row has the same emitter design as a sample row, just place a cap with the same flow and pressure. Number the caps by the wall number followed by a dot (.), then followed by a row number. So for wall 1, first row from the bottom, the cap identifier number should be 1.1. For wall 5, 10th row up from the bottom, the cap identifier number should be 5.10. Cap identifiers must be numbers – not letters.
2F. Delete the temporary valves.
2G. Place Spot Elevation callouts next to caps, and a Spot Elevation of 0 at the bottom of the wall.
2H. Place a temporary valve at elevation 0.
2i. Draw lateral pipe vertically up the wall, connecting the temporary valve at the bottom of the wall to each cap at each row.
2J. Size the vertical lateral pipe to determine the demand for the wall.
2K. Place another valve callout to label the temporary sized valve.
2L. Run a new Valve Schedule.
When configuring the schedule this time, select the Elevations option,
which will account for Spot Elevations in the schedule.
Place this new schedule below the detail viewport.
3. Place caps in the site plan. Number these caps by wall number – for example, the cap for wall 1 should be numbered 1, the cap for wall 5 should be numbered 5, etc.
4. Draw lateral pipe connecting the caps to the valves you plan to use in your project. Size the lateral pipe connected to these valves.
5. Draw mainline pipe to connect the valves to the site's water source.
7. Run schedules like you normally would for a site, such as:
Related Webinars
- Design a Vertical Planter: Learn how to create a legible planting plan for a vertical wall, with connected irrigation, that any contractor should be able to read, understand, and build exactly as intended. (1 hr 1 min)
- Living Walls Made Easy: Sean Brennan of Vertexx shows how a living wall can provide an unlimited variety of planting designs with the reliability of plant success. (47 min)
Contact
- Land F/X
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