As a living wall installer we install two types of decorative living walls: indoor walls and outdoor walls. Indoor walls have tropical plants. Outdoor walls have plants that look good in the harsh NY winter. A third kind of wall we install, both indoor and outdoor, is an edible wall.
Edible walls can have pretty much any plant that will grow in 4″ of growing medium. We have planted baby finger carrots, small onions, strawberries, spinach, lettuce, celery, and any type of herb.
Indoor edible walls are cool because you can grow vegetables year round in New York’s harsh winters. We built an indoor wall that even had watermelon, cantaloupe, eggplant, peppers and squash. The watermelon and cantaloupe were allowed to trail onto the floor where the fruit rested.
An indoor wall if large enough can provide a good amount of food throughout the year. Of course most New Yorkers don’t have the space indoors for a wall large enough to sustain them, but there is nothing like having pancakes with strawberries freshly picked from your indoor living wall.
Here is a video of a living wall we built indoors that has pretty much every edible herb and vegetable you could imagine. It even has watermelon and cantaloupe!
Check out this cool edible living wall we did. It’s the largest one we know of in NY. It was built indoors in an Earthship inspired home. The owners will have veggies in the dead of winter! #ecobrooklyn #livingwall #greenwall #edibles #ediblewall #buildthewall #earthship pic.twitter.com/62QxYVDSYM
— Eco Brooklyn (@EcoBrooklyn) June 7, 2018
Edible living wall. #ecobrooklyn #eco_brooklyn #edibles #livingwalls #greenwall #earthship #indoorgrowing pic.twitter.com/1X9DsMI6fx
— Eco Brooklyn (@EcoBrooklyn) June 20, 2018
Of course vegetables and herbs like lots of sunlight, another thing not always available in New York homes. So we install super efficient LED grow lights when indoors to help boost the light.
Because of space constraints most edible green walls don’t provide enough food to feed a person. But picking your own vegetables and fruit feeds you in a way that store bought food could never do. It is a very grounding experience and puts you in touch with very basic and important human needs.