When Patrick Blanc was a boy, he suspended plants from his bedroom wall and ran their roots into a fish tank. The greenery received nourishment from the diluted—ahem—fertilizer and purified the water in return. Forty-five years on, the French botanist's gardens have grown massive in scale. One inside a Portuguese shopping mall is larger than four tennis courts, and there's one in Kuwait that's almost as big. But Blanc's recently completed facade for the Athenaeum hotel in London (shown) could be his most high-profile project yet. Looming over Green Park, it's an eight-story antigravity forest composed of 12,000 plants.
Blanc uses a kind of techno-trellis as the underlying structure: A plastic-coated aluminum frame is fastened to the wall and covered with synthetic felt into which plant roots can burrow. A custom irrigation system keeps the felt moist with a fertilizer solution modeled after the rainwater that trickles through forest canopies.
But plants for this vertical landscape must be chosen with care. Because the walls are so high, conditions vary widely. The shade at ground level is perfect for rare Asian nettles; on the brighter upper stories, plants that usually cling to windblown cliff faces brave the blustery British breezes.
Blanc, who still has a fish-tank setup in his apartment, says his creations will always reach upward: "I leave horizontal gardens to others. I only think vertically."
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The vertical garden at the Athenaeum, which is eight stories tall, has 260 plant species and more than 12,000 plants
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Eighty percent of the plants at the Athenaeum are evergreen; 20 percent are seasonal. They are planted according to environmental demands — those that need more sun, for example, go up top. Ferns go below, where there's more shade.
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Blanc designed the first vertical garden in Spain, which covers an entire wall facing the entrance of the CaixaForum Madrid, designed by starchitects Herzog & de Mueron
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The gardens don't have to be outside. Here's one designed for the Taipei Concert Hall. Blanc first began experimenting with vertical gardens in his bedroom 40 years ago, when he was 12.
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Before he was known as a vertical gardener, Blanc was a precocious botanist. Many of the plants he uses are species he brought back himself from across Asia.
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A vertical garden adorns the underside of a bridge, Pont Juvénal, in Aix-en-Provence.
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Blanc's largest garden lies on Rue d'Alsace, in Paris, covering more than 15,000 square feet.
When Patrick Blanc was a boy, he suspended plants from his bedroom wall and ran their roots into a fish tank. The greenery received nourishment from the diluted—ahem—fertilizer and purified the water in return. Forty-five years on, the French botanist's gardens have grown massive in scale. One inside a Portuguese shopping mall is larger than four tennis courts, and there's one in Kuwait that's almost as big. But Blanc's recently completed facade for the Athenaeum hotel in London (shown) could be his most high-profile project yet. Looming over Green Park, it's an eight-story antigravity forest composed of 12,000 plants.
Blanc uses a kind of techno-trellis as the underlying structure: A plastic-coated aluminum frame is fastened to the wall and covered with synthetic felt into which plant roots can burrow. A custom irrigation system keeps the felt moist with a fertilizer solution modeled after the rainwater that trickles through forest canopies.
But plants for this vertical landscape must be chosen with care. Because the walls are so high, conditions vary widely. The shade at ground level is perfect for rare Asian nettles; on the brighter upper stories, plants that usually cling to windblown cliff faces brave the blustery British breezes.
Blanc, who still has a fish-tank setup in his apartment, says his creations will always reach upward: "I leave horizontal gardens to others. I only think vertically."
> The vertical garden at the Athenaeum, which is eight stories tall, has 260 plant species and more than 12,000 plants
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