Climbing the walls

Vertical gardens are creeping their way onto walls indoor and out across the world. First invented by a Professor White in 1938, the current trend for hanging gardens ties in closely with the green revolution.

A growing desire to incorporate nature into unusual and urban areas has led to a blurring of the traditional uses of space, and plants are no longer confined solely to designated garden areas.

Kevin Frankental and his brother Ricky were quick to see the potential of this type of verdure. Started three years ago, their company, GROW, specialises in creating large-scale, vertical gardens. They cleverly spent the first two years researching and developing, which has enabled them to create solid partnerships and execute large-scale projects nationwide.

For an idea of scale and effort: in March 2012 they completed a garden for Nedbank in Pretoria after 7 months of planning and work. 350 hours of planting with 10 full time planters later, the end result comprises an impressive 7500 plants with 11 indigenous species. In collaboration with landscape designer Leon Kluge, GROW create world-class, highly engineered solutions.

We love this concept and the integration of nature into daily, urban life. Hopefully we will be seeing more and more of this across South African cities in the near future!

More info: www.growcollective.co.za