How I built a rainforest in my living room. (DIY living plant wall)Posted by Clapp Montgomery on May 21st, 2021 [, Music ] everyone. Today, I'm going to show you how I built this beautiful specimen, which is a living plant wall inside our home. I'M gon na go through how I built it the plants on the wall, how I maintain it and basically everything you need to know about building your own mini tropical paradise at home. Let'S get to it! It'S about 6 feet by 6 feet so about 36 square feet of plants. We have last, I counted around 90 individual plants on this wall. It'S lit up here by four different, all right, they're the same, but there's four individual lights. That they're essentially grow lights. I can put the info of these lights in the description and then it's on a track. This thing is lit 10 hours a day, it's on a timer, so we don't have to do any any manual, turning on and off of the lights, but it seems to work really well for the plants all right. So, let's take a look at the frame, which is probably the most important part. The frame the back of the frame here is just a sheet of stainless steel. So there's one sheet of stainless steel that goes from the top down around four feet, and then you can see right here. There'S there's another sheet kind of layered on top of it, because I couldn't find the sheet that was that could span the entire height of this frame. Then there's also like a bead of silicone and run along here to make it watertight. So the back is essentially just the same less steel sheet and then around the edges. We have this 90-degree aluminum bracket. I don't know it kind of looks like an L and then that is just screwed into the the frame. So what that does is it? It adds like a structure to the frame. So if we just had a sheet it would the thing would wobble all around, but if we have this L brace running around the entire frame, it just makes it. It just prevents the frame from bending another thing that it does is it it makes it. So. The water can't get out, so we don't really want water like scaping and running around the back. So this thing just keeps everything contained within the wall now. Another thing to note is along every surface here you can see through the mirror. We have silicon just run to prevent any water from escaping out of the back. We want to keep all the water on the front side of this wall. We don't want to cause any damage to the floor or to the mirror. Another thing we have is on the back here we have these little Stoppers, because our wall is hanging from the ceiling. You can see. That'S just like screwed in with an eye hook there and then chain to the another eye hook in the ceiling. So this wall is just hanging, so it can wobble back and forth and if it does wobble, we don't want it to to hit into the mirror and cause damage to the mirror. So we have these just plastic Stoppers that prevent the the steel from hitting the mirror. Next up is find this guttering. The guttering is just a plastic standard plastic gutter that we picked up at Home Depot and then it's just machine screwed into the stainless steel backing. And then these are just the standard end caps that you can buy with the gutter and yeah. So that's just screwed onto the bottom, all right! So now, let's look at how the plants are actually attached to the frame. We have two layers of PVC signage board, I'll post, a link in the description for info on this stuff. It'S basically like plastic PVC board that makes it easy to staple stuff to so that is screwed to the the frame in the back and the next up. We have this it's kind of like a felt it's made out of recycled plastic bottles. It'S like this woven textile. That is a good medium for growing plants, and it has a lot of breathability, so their air can get to the roots of the plants. It also is good at maintaining moisture. So you want to strike a balance between moisture retention and breathability when you're trying to grow plants and synthetic mediums such as these. This is also screwed to the the frame in the back. So there are two layers of this fabric stuff and on the outer layer you can cut a slit like that and then just sandwich a plant right in between the two layers, so right behind that slit, there's another layer of that fabric stuff, as acting as the The backing, and then this just allows us to cut little pockets inside the felt it doesn't need to be stretched out a little bit to get the plant situated in there. But it makes it really easy and then, as you can see here on either side of the slit, there are staples that just staple into that plastic backing right there that just keep the pockets from like peeling off too much next up is the irrigation. This irrigation system is closed, loop, closed-circuit, whatever it's called. It essentially means that everything is recirculated, so there's no water coming in from a water main to water, this wall and then the the excess water has just flushed out to the drain that we have a basin down here. That is essentially just a tub of water and there's a pump in here. The pump runs for four minutes in the morning and four minutes in the afternoon. It just pumps up water through a filter here to filter out any debris or minerals from the fertilizer up. Here through irrigation tubing that just runs alongside the wall here up to the top and then there's drip emitters, every four or so inches at the top here. So here's one right here that water will drip out and that drips along the wall and it just flows down the entire wall to water all the plants. So here's the pump on - and you can hear the water coming up here and now it's it's saturating. The top up here and then the water will drip down and all the plants will be watered. So here you can see this plant being watered, even though it is several feet down from the top, so the water just drips down and does a magical job of watering all the plants in the wall. All right. Let'S take a look at some of the plants growing on the wall, so a lot of these plants are natural epiphytes. So what that means is that in the wild they grow naturally on trees and in rocks and without soil. So for a lot of these plants, they're actually growing in the wall without any added soil and how that works is their roots just root into the felt. So, let's take a look at some of those plants. These are the roots of the anthurium vgi and, as you can see, they are rooted in to the back layer of the felt it just allows the plants to get the moisture they need from the felt which spreads around the water, all right, so picking which plants To put on the wall is one thing: picking where the plant should go in the wall is another thing, so, let's get into how I decided which plant should go where and sort of the structure of the planting of the wall. So if we take a step back and look at the entire wall, you might be able to notice a few different patterns. So we have these anthe Rams down here and then we have another anthurium, that's kind of being blocked. I think you might be able to see it behind this begonia, so I kind of wanted to go for a little stripes along the wall, just to keep your eye moving, so your eye doesn't fix on a single point on the wall over here we have some More anta's - and these are actually striped up across the wall. You can see one right there, just kind of striping up here. We'Ve also got these core datums philodendron. This is the lemon lime, another stripe and in the middle here we've got a goldfish, which is a vining houseplant striped along the wall here over here we've got a pilot Moon Valley. It'S kind of in this, this stripe formation down here and then over here we've got, of course, the monstera yeah, monstera kind of lining up the wall and a little stripe there. So what all this striping stuff does is, when you take a look at the wall from far back your eyes, just kind of move over the entire wall, there's no like single focal point where you're you're, just stuck your eyes, keep moving and it makes the wall. Look really good. Another thing that we do fairly regularly is miss the plants, so this is just a mixture with water and we miss some of the leaves of the plants I to get more moisture now. One thing you have to be careful of is: if you have hardwood floor like we, do you don't want to have water dripping down onto the floor, so you have to be careful about not over misting and wiping off any water that may spill on the floor. All right, let's talk about bugs the thing that no one wants on their wall. What do we do to keep bugs off of this wall? We spray it with soapy water every month, or so all the leaves of these plants and then wipe them down with paper. Towels to keep bugs from developing we've, seen a few bugs on this Claire and erbium. It had some aphids once and the soapy water mixture seemed to do the trick. But if you have a plant that has a recurring bug, problem get rid of the plant immediately. You don't want the bugs to spread. This is coming from someone who had a wall where the bugs just taken over you don't want that the bugs can really easily spread to other plants. So it's best to get rid of a single plant and save all your others then keep the plant in and just annihilate your entire wall. That'S not what you want all right. So that's our wall, if you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. Also in the description, I have all the info for materials. I got for this wall like where to buy these lights, the pumps, the timers, the felt all that kind of stuff. So it should be in the description, but if you have any other questions, let me know in the comments. If you haven't made a wall of your own I'd love to see it. Let me know - and I hope you guys enjoyedLike it? Share it! |