When a landscaping project is being planned there will often be requests for features to be included in the landscape design that are not as common as others. These range from unusual plants, exotically designed structures, and the one which is the subject of this article, namely vertical gardens. Vertical gardens are becoming more popular in landscaping and are requested for different reasons. A common reason is that the space available in the landscape design is extremely small and thus growing vertically makes the most use of the space that is available. Another reason is simply that a homeowner likes the idea of plants growing upwards and downwards. Vertical gardens are also a great way to make what would otherwise be a drab, uninteresting wall, into something organic, alive, and full of colour. We are going to look further at these reasons, and some others that make including a vertical garden in your landscape design a fantastic idea. What Is A Vertical Garden? Before we go further, we thought we should clarify what a vertical garden is for those who have not come across this gardening feature before. A vertical garden is a means to grow plants of all types without their roots having to be in the soil in the ground. Instead, the roots will be in pots or other plant containers which are attached to the structure. The term often used for this type of planting is hydroponics. The pots and containers we mentioned can come in all shapes and they are fixed to a structure that is either freestanding or will be attached to a wall or a fence. The layout of the plants can be configured as you wish so they could be in rows, columns, or aligned in shapes such as circles, squares, or even triangles. Surprisingly, vertical gardens have only been around for 80+ years after they were first introduced to the horticultural world by a University of Illinois professor called Stanley Hart White in the late 1930s. His concept was further developed by the French botanist Patrick Blanc who introduced the idea of walls being used to grow plants and created the hydroponic irrigation system which could sustain them....