LIVING WALLS

Sometimes called green walls or vertical gardens, living walls bring vegetation to built environments. Though designed to appear seamless, living walls are often constructed out of hundreds of individual modules each holding a single plant. When attached to building exteriors, these living mosaics add beauty to their surroundings while also providing important ecosystem services. Living walls can improve air quality, help to lower building temperatures, and protect from heavy rainfall. In urban settings, living walls also offer potential to support biodiversity by providing resources for insects and birds.

The Court: A Garden Within Reach features New England Botanic Garden’s two seasonal living wall displays. The walls, which get installed with plants in early summer, sit on opposite ends of this garden space, one in full sun and the other in shade. Plants are chosen not only for their exposure tolerance but also for features like attractive foliage, flowers, intriguing textures, and ability to hold interest over many weeks. As highlights in a universally accessible garden designed to create sensory experiences, both living walls feature blocks of color and repeating patterns to be more visually pleasing to visitors with minor visual impairments.

How do you take care of the plants?
Each living wall has a drip irrigation system attached to watering timers that can be manually turned on to water the walls. The horticulture team can also tie in a mobile fertilizer tank to feed the plants throughout the season. Pruning, deadheading, and occasional plant replacement also happen throughout the growing season to make sure the living walls stay looking their best.

How do you design the walls?
The living wall modules are installed as a set grid pattern that never changes. The design process involves choosing a color palette for the walls that integrates with the rest of The Court. Once a palette is chosen, the horticulture team looks at available plants and starts thinking about combinations. Because this is a seasonal display, they have the option to use herbaceous annuals, tropicals, and/or perennials. The team considers how the plants play together visually in terms of color, texture, and pattern. Plant habits—how a plant will grow and change—are an important consideration when designing living walls to avoid cascading plants covering up more upright neighboring plants below them.

How many plants are incorporated into each wall?
The shade wall has space for 408 plants. In past years, the sun wall contained 608 plants.

How long are the walls on display?
The Garden’s living walls are on display from June to September

  • Foxtail fern (Aparagus densiflorus ‘Myers’)
  • EverColor Everillo sedge (Carex oshimensis ‘Everillo’)
  • Painted nettle (Coleus ‘Swinging Linda’)
  • Foamy bells (Heucherella ‘Copper King’)
  • Coral bells (Heuchera ‘Grape Timeless’)

  • Joseph’s coat (Alternanthera ficoidea ‘Red Threads’)
  • Joseph’s coat (Alternanthera ficoidea ‘True Yellow’)
  • Wedge sweet potato (Ipomoea ‘FloraMia Limon’)
  • Lantana (Lantana camara ‘Bandana Red’)
  • Stellar Geranium (Pelargonium ‘Vancouver Centennial’)
  • Vervain (Verbena canadensis ‘Homestead Purple’)
  • The Shade living walls feature plants in an vertical striped pattern.
  • Horticulture staff adds plants to the living wall.
  • The sun wall features various flowers in a diagonal striped pattern.
  • Horticulture staff works on sorting plants to fo on the living wall.
  • The summer 2024 shade living wall pattern is line-based.
  • A horticulture intern helps plant the cells of the sun living wall.
  • The sun living wall display in summer of 2024 shows off a geometric pattern.

Living Wall displays throughout the years.