We our office remodeled last year, the owner had them put in a living wall. It looked great for the first 6 months or so, but is getting ragged. It is planted with pothos. Even though pothos is a low light plant, I think the lack of light is an issue as it only gets fluorescent light for 8-10 hours, five days a week.

It uses a watering trough design where each plant pot has wicks that suck water from a central channel. If it's left until the channel is completely dry, then the plants start wilting. Watering any more often, and the pots get too wet and the plants start rotting off.

A maintenance contract is available from the company that installed the wall, but at almost $1000 a month, we've been inclined to spend $50 a month on new plants.

Any one have any suggestions?

Thanks

Rick M

Are you set on keeping all the pothos? Succulents are something that usually do very well in vertical planters. They use less water and require less maintenance than a lot of things. They do need soil that is very well draining. Ferns also seem to work well in the living walls as long as they are smaller and have smaller root systems. One key is to use plants that have similar requirements for their culture.

Plant grow-lights are something to consider as well if you want to provide brighter growing conditions.

Thanks Tee. I've thought about putting in fern, but the selection isn't that great up here right now.

Plants lights would help considerably, I'm sure. The problem is that the architects were told to design for looks, not function. As a result, there are no electrical outs nearby. I've started looking into ceiling fixtures, but it's going to be a rough sell because of the form over function.

I actually have a couple of companies that I work with at home that specialize in LED lighting. They're checking with their sources about an attractive, ceiling-mount linear LED grow light source. If they can't find anything, I'm going to try to convince them to create the product from the specs that I've developed.

Rick

I know how that goes. If you can somehow get more lighting, I think there will be better success with the plants. And perhaps others will then like the function as well as the form.

Yes, it's not exactly fern season right now. But something to plan for.

Rick, I use some LED's in my orchid greenhouse, but because typical LED's are low wattage, these light-strips have to be within 12-18" of my plants to be effective. I know higher wattage LED's are available, though they really get up in price. Mixing in some staghorn ferns, bromeliads, and even some mounted orchids might work for you. Variable plant varieties would make the "wall" more appealing and even fun to build. You need to increase the light though. Fluorescents, again like LED's, would be poor light sources for growing plants in your office, (mostly) due to the distance of the fixtures from the plants. You simply don't have the light spectrum or lumens necessary for good plant maintenance.

Thanks Ken. Part of the specs that I gave the lighting guys was that the light source would have to be within 18-24" and the fixture no more that 3" high so that the eye would be drawn to the plants and not the fixture sticking out of the ceiling.

When I refreshed the wall at the beginning of the month, I tried introducing a bit more color with a variety of red-leaf prayer plant. By and large, they've done well except that they, like the pothos are straining for light.

Using bromeliads and orchids isn't completely out of the question, but I would have to reconfigure the wall because of plant heights. Then again, that may help the rest because of improved air circulation, as well as add some textural variety.

Once more plant varieties are available, I'm definitely going to mix it up. I'm hoping to put seasonal bloomers in as well. Things like cyclamen for the first parts of February, maybe some short hyacinth for March/April.

Good idea.

It sounds like you have good plans in mind and don't mind "experimenting" with different plants/lighting.

One nice thing about bromeliads, or at least the majority of them, is that they don't require much light (but may need more for good flowering), have very limited root systems, and only need watering when their "urn" dries out. If you mount them just before flowering, lack of bright light becomes a non-problem. Just keeping water in the urn-like leaves is all they really need and twice a year, add a general purpose, water-soluble fertilizer, at 1/4 tsp/gal. Some are compact plants and some can get pretty large, with 2' leaves.

When the time comes, post photos if you can, RickM.

Rick, if possible please post a photo of the wall including the ceiling and floor.

Evan,

I'll try to get a couple of pics tomorrow.

/r

Thanks Rick.

For more light that doesn't offend customers, how about a 500-Watt spotlight that sits on the floor? Set it out on an extension cord after the last customer leaves and put it away the next morning before any arrive. Have a timer that turns it on just a few hours each morning and night so the plants do get some dark. Run it for 14 hours on Saturday and Sunday.

>> each plant pot has wicks that suck water from a central channel. If it's left until the channel is completely dry, then the plants start wilting. Watering any more often, and the pots get too wet and the plants start rotting off.

Hmm, $33 per day? $250 per week? For that much, I would add a measured amount of water 2, 3 or 5 times per week! Let it run dry briefly a few times per week.

A short length of clear plastic tubing silicon-glued into a hole in the bottom of the trough and then bent upwards would reveal at a glance the depth remaining in the trough. I guess it would have to be invisible to customers if appearance is more important than thriving plants!

It sounds like the wicks are too big (wick too fast) for the pots. If they don't clog up on their own and slow down their water delivery, you might replace a few to see what delivers a slower rate. Or use bigger pots or put a fan on them to speed evaporation.

Are the wicks visible and soft? you might tie a few threads around one wick near the top, to throttle down (choke off) some of the flow rate. Figure out what it takes, from a slight constriction to a paper clip or binder clamp.

if the trough is ABOVE the pots, is it possible to lower the trough?

Or you could lay down absorbent pads that run the length of the trough, under each pot (assuming the pots have some bottom holes). Then arrange some hidden "downcomer" wicks that conduct excess water out of each trough to a concealed pot at ground level.

I assume that you are not watering with "softened" water. Usually that means that the "hard" minerals have been replaced with sodium chloride.

using wicks to reduce water-logging
http://garden.org/ideas/view/R...

I have no suggestion but there is a gorgeous, giant living wall in the Edmonton Canada airport. There is a list of plants that have been planted there. I will look through my photos to find what I can find that might help you choose your plants.

That's beautiful!

http://www.sys-con.com/node/22...

Wow! Thanks for the link, Tee!

Tee, what kind of succulents do well in such low light? Completely baffled on this one.....

At Home Depot, I take care of the houseplants sold at my store. We only have the fluorescent lights that are mounted from the ceiling, 20ft(!) above the hanging plants. Plants that might be applicable, and adapt well and can be grown continuously are pothos, philodendron, Rabbit's Foot fern, hoya. But if even pothos is showing light starvation, I don't think anything will do better without addressing that problem.

Rick, no natural light?

We had 10 or so 4' hanging planters with fair natural and artificial lighting in the rotunda of our office. They were planted with Pothos and fern. The maintenance folks would change out individual plants as required and I wonder if that might be part of an appropriate solution.

Whole Foods in Austin has had a few different living walls. I believe the first one was bromeliads above the escalators. They didn't do well, even with natural light coming in.
Have you considered living moss? I tried to capture the photo of the new store's living wall of moss and steel, but was unsuccessful. If you scroll through the photos on the second link below, the moss wall is #12.

http://gsky.com/whole-foods-au...

A moss wall over the escalator leading to the parking garage...#12 photo
http://impactnews.com/austin-m...

Evan, yes, no natural light. From re reading my post, I may have given the idea that all plants there survive well, but no. I would say half the plants would not survive long term. Only the ones I list are the ones that are both applicable to RickM's needs and ones that continue to grow and look nice long term. The Rabbit's Foot fern is remarkably surprising to me, but it does use a lot of water. Of course the fluorescent bulbs must be at least high output, and all lights are on 16 hours a day (7days a week). 5 days a week, lights are on 2/3 power overnight.