Hi and welcome to ATP. Nobody seems to want to take a stab at your question, so I'll send you some thoughts. That's a really beautiful wall of ivy in your picture.
A good plant to attempt this idea with might be:
Creeping Fig (Ficus pumila)
A problem you might encounter is damage to the brick wall from vining plants that will attach themselves to the brick. Things like ivy, and other aggressive climbing vines (including the Creeping Fig) have very tenacious attachment systems that can leave marks. Twining vines wouldn't cause these problems but you'd need a strong support system to get them to climb nicely.
As far as optimal conditions go, it really depends on a lot of factors including:
- where do you live? (btw. if you would put your city, state or country into your personal profile, it will help in future when you have other gardening questions)
- how much light is available to plants that would be on the brick wall
- do you heat your house in winter with forced air?
- do you air-condition your house in summer?
The conditions inside your average house are really only friendly to certain low-light, low moisture plants. See that beautiful big window in your picture above? Lots of natural light coming in there . . .
When it's comfortable for humans it's like a dark, dry desert to a plant. Every other type of plant takes a lot of care and attention to get it to grow indoors nicely for any length of time. If you live in the Pacific NW, or Hawaii where you can have the doors open a lot, and the humidity is naturally high, and IF you are also willing to install some supplementary lighting for the plants as needed, it might be workable. Or have skylights installed above the wall?
I'd suggest you get yourself a small "living wall kit" like this
http://www.hayneedle.com/produ... and try it out on a small scale before you go "all in" on this. It's a big commitment, and will not be a low-maintenance thing if you do get it going.
The only living walls I've seen that were successful were outdoors, to be honest. (but I am in Florida . . ) Two friends of mine have tried it indoors and gave up due to a variety of problems that included keeping the plants growing nicely through the changing seasons, mold growing on the wall behind the plants, and bug infestations.
