Vertical Gardens Designs Educate Children in Many Ways
Vertical gardens have been gaining ground since the turn of the decade, appearing on the sides of city buildings, inside restaurants and public spaces and as educational projects that encourage children to be more aware of the importance of plants, and inspire their creative talents by choosing the appropriate plants and arrangements to create a stunning masterpiece.
Not restricted to just one geographic region, there are interesting and successful vertical garden projects popping up in schools all over the world; projects that will inspire you to begin designing your own vertical garden at home with your children.
Benefits of Vertical Gardens in Schools
Aside from the educational and personal development benefits that vertical gardens offer school children – at Discovery High School in New York, for example, attendance increased from 40% to 93% because students didn’t want to miss taking part in the school’s gardening project – vertical gardens are beautiful. They change the look and feel of a school, turning it from a hard, concrete enclosure into a flourishing breath of fresh air.
An easy DIY option for schools to install are the Wall Garden System available in a number of styles.
The greatest design advantage of vertical gardens in schools is that they don’t take up much space. Vertical gardens can be added to the outside of school buildings or placed along the interior walls of classrooms. They can also be filled with flowers, herbs, vegetables or succulents to teach the students about different kinds of plants and the different roles they play in our lives.
Exterior school walls get a green makeover in Scotland
In conjunction with the Central Scotland Green Network (CSGN) Ideas Fund, the innovative ‘Edible Vertical Gardens’ project was put in place and overseen by Edinburgh-based research scientist, Lynette Robertson. The project benefited from the landscape designs of Catalan designer, Marc Grañén, and secured a number of edible vertical gardens in urban schools across Scotland.
The idea focused on finding an exciting way of bringing more nature into Scottish schools and of inspiring younger generations to search for ways of solving the ecological crisis faced by our planet due to climate change. Simple trellis structures were fixed to the exterior walls of all the schools that took part and the edible plants were given as much room as possible to roam freely. The result was a powerful impact of edible green lush that the children adored.
A variety of herbs and plants an be grown using the wall garden system available online, or alternatively, you may choose to use artificial green walls to decorate fencing around a section of garden area to ensure that local amenity is enhanced.
Green designs turn children into gardeners in Barcelona
A number of school vertical garden projects were developed in Barcelona thanks to the direct support of both Barcelona City Council’s Environmental Department and the organization, Obra Social La Caixa. One of the most noticeable benefits of these projects related to the symbiotic relationship between classroom students and the environment. Children were invited to connect with nature on a day to day basis, learning how to grow plants and take care of diverse ecosystems.
These projects helped to prove just how good vertical garden designs are for children. Taking care of a huge lawn is not something children can easily master, nor enjoy. But a small vertical garden with a clear focus – whether it be flowers, herbs, vegetables or succulents – grabs a child’s interest and provides them with a more than achievable challenge.
Design that gets kids eating veggies in Baltimore
Riyaz Gayasaddin and Mike Rennard created a number of indoor vertical gardens with the help of students in Baltimore City Public Schools. Their projects promoted vertical gardens as a way of teaching students about the research, planning, planting and harvesting that goes into vegetable growing. Naturally, students also had lots of fun eating the vegetables they’d cultivated in their school vertical gardens.
If you choose to cultivate a vertical vegetable garden at home, you can inspire your children to cook with home-grown produce and eat more vegetables as a consequence. On a practical design note, vertical vegetable gardens do need to receive a lot of light, as a general rule, so it’s important that you take this into consideration when planning where to install your new veggie feature.
Sustainable design at its most beautiful in Melbourne
A team of engineering students from Victoria University worked to build a ‘living wall’ of lush plants in two primary schools in Melbourne. With funding of roughly $5000 AUD to build a garden in each school, the university students created the gardens as part of their final year assessments.
As well as improving the aesthetics of each school’s concrete structure, the gardens offered a clever way of regulating the temperature of the buildings and provided young children with a first-hand learning experience related to sustainability practices.
These projects just go to show that vertical garden designs can offer your children a whole lot more than a pretty green surface. Intelligent vertical garden design is an experience worth investing in.
If you are interested in an artificial or real vertical garden project, do get in touch with our expert designers to ensure you get a green wall that meets all your needs.
