Wonder wall: a vertical city garden

Even for those who live in the very heart of our capital city, the odds are that you won’t know of Crampton Court, the medieval laneway that runs between Dame Street and Essex Street and which is so narrow that those who use it must inhale deeply and then squeeze sharply to one side in order to pass by any fellow pedestrians they might meet. Earlier this year, this tiny thoroughfare got something of a makeover as part of “Love Your Lanes”, the joint initiative between Dublin City Council (DCC) and the Temple Bar Company whose aim is to “reactivate” some of the city’s disused or neglected laneways in fresh, creative ways.

In Crampton Court’s case, that initiative culminated in colourful art work, murals, a pop-up outdoor gallery, and – last but not least – an endearingly leafy “green wall” installation by Dublin-born landscape architect Eoghan Riordan Fernandez. Slotted neatly into a series of blocked-up window openings belonging to the derelict red-brick facade of an old building (itself long since gone), Riordan Fernandez’s living wall has had a transformative effect on this city laneway, reminding passers-by that a garden can be created in the most unexpected of places. “The reaction has been great”, says the recent graduate of UCD’s school of architecture, whose interest in living walls was sparked during his student days, when he created what he describes as “a subterranean green wall” as part of a city garden designed for one of his tutors.

Vertical gardens, of course, are not an unfamiliar concept to most people, due in large part to the work of the well-known French botanist and ecological engineer, Patric Blanc. The world’s largest, completed earlier this year, occupies the facade of the 24-storey building known as the Tree House, in Singapore. Measuring 78m high and 20m wide, this giant green wall, planted with an evergreen tropical climber known as the Bengal clock vine, or Thunbergia grandiflora, naturally insulates the towering building it covers, significantly reducing both heating and air-conditioning costs while improving air quality by filtering pollutants and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Living green walls can also be seen in many of Europe’s biggest cities, including London (The Rubens at the Palace Hotel), Paris (Blanc’s 800sq m green wall for the Musée du Quai Branly), Malmo in Sweden, Milan (Café Trussardi, also Blanc’s work) Barcelona (Capella Garcia’s Tarradellas Garden) and Madrid (the art gallery known as the Caixa Forum, also Blanc’s work). It was in 2012, while on one of his frequent visits to Spain, that Riordan Fernandez came across the work of a Barcelona-based company called “Verdtical” specialising in green wall design. “I was impressed by the quality of their installations so I did a training course with them before working on some different projects in Barcelona. It was fascinating learning how to install the various systems that they supply, as well as visiting the Verdtical nurseries where the plants are grown for supply to countries all over Europe.”

Once back home in Ireland, Riordan Fernandez started creating living walls for clients of Sequoia Design, his landscaping and design company. This year, he also created three living walls for the award-winning Bloom show garden “The Pantry Garden”. So when Esther Gerrard (part of the brains behind this year’s successful Bloom Fringe Festival) submitted a “Bloom Fringe Legacy” proposal to the Love Your Lanes initiative that included greening up the shabby walls of Crampton Lane, Riordan Fernandez’s name was on her list.

In comparison to any of the green wall projects mentioned above, the Crampton Court project is on an altogether more modest scale (each window opening measures just 147cm by 105cm). The 270 plants that it uses, specially sourced from Verdtical’s nurseries, were chosen for their ability to tolerate both shade and Irish climatic conditions. Among them is the low-growing, evergreen grassy plant known as Liriope muscari, whose slender spikes of violet flowers appear around about this time of year. Another is heuchera (in a range of different varieties), a clump-forming, usually evergreen perennial valued for its colourful rounded leaves. Riordan Fernandez also used different evergreen ferns, combining them to create a vertical living tapestry of contrasting foliage shapes and colours.

But how, you might ask, do you get a plant to grow in such seemingly inhospitable conditions? Inspect Crampton Court’s green wall closely and you’ll discover that each plant grows in its very own tiny growing pouch or pocket. This is made of a woolly geotextile fabric, fixed to a rigid frame constructed from eco-friendly polyethylene, while a discreetly installed, computerised irrigation system ensures regular watering. The system is linked to Riordan Fernandez’s mobile phone, alerting him to any problems/mechanical failure. Surprisingly, the growing medium used to fill each pouch isn’t soil or compost, but sphagnum moss, the very same medium in which they are cultivated in Verdtical’s nurseries.

Crampton Court's living wall may be on a small scale, but Riordan Fernandez now has some larger projects in the pipeline, including an interior green wall planned for UCD's school of architecture and a couple of other DCC outdoor projects, one close to the National College of Art and Design on Thomas Street and another near the site of the Smithfield fish market. There are also a couple of landmark Dublin buildings that he wouldn't mind getting his green-fingered hands on . . .

To contact Eoghan Riordan Fernandez, see sequoiadesign.ie

THIS WEEK IN THE GARDEN

Sow broad beans directly in the ground, to a depth of 5cm/2 inches and leaving a spacing of 15-20cm/ 6-8 inches between seeds and 45cm/ 18 inches between each row or drill. Choose a well prepared fertile site in full sun but don't add manure. "Super Aquadulce" and "Aquadulce Claudia" are two varieties especially suitable for an autumn sowing. Reliable stockists include greenvegetableseeds.com and mrmiddleton.com

If you have a free-draining soil, it's worth planting some onion sets – pictured right – (Japanese types), which will overwinter and can then be harvested a month or more before their spring-planted equivalents. Suitable varieties include the early-maturing, bolt-resistant "Troy", "Radar" and "Electric". For best results, choose a sunny spot that has been previously manured for another crop (for example, the now-empty potato patch).

If there's a young evergreen shrub growing in your garden that you would like to move to a new position, then now is the time to do it. Choose a cool, still day and start by watering the plant well before digging a generous sized planting hole and adding some organic matter to the base. Dig carefully around the base of the plant – trying to keep as much of the rootball intact as possible – before lifting it (sometimes a two-person job) and replanting it at the same soil level and then giving it a good water.

Start collecting fallen leaves (pictured below) to make leafmould, a rich, dark, crumbly soil conditioner that's a wonderful addition to any garden soil or potting mixture, and can also be used as a moisture-retentive mulch in autumn/ late spring. All you need to do is to tightly pack the fallen leaves into either black bin bags or custom-made leaf bins.

The leaves of beech, oak, alder and hornbeam are among the most suitable while horse-chestnut, sycamore and walnut are slower to break down and should be shredded/chopped up with a garden shears to speed up the process.