Growing your own food at home can be a truly rewarding experience. But not everyone is lucky enough to have a massive garden where they can create their own urban farm. If you only have a small garden, or even no garden at all, whether you are restricted to a small balcony, patio or courtyard area, or even just a sunny spot inside your home, you will be astounded by how much you can still grow. A vertical garden is a great solution for small spaces, whether they are inside your home, in a covered growing structure such as a greenhouse or polytunnel, or outside.

What is a Vertical Garden?

Especially when gardening in small spaces, it is vitally important to think about filling the vertical space as well as the horizontal space. When we think about the vertical plane as well as the horizontal plane, we can dramatically increase the amount of food that we are able to grow. A vertical garden is simply a structure or system that allows you to make the most of the vertical space available, as well as just the ground area.

Vertical Garden Ideas

Trellises

It is easy to make trellises and other frameworks for plants to climb. The simplest trellis ideas are those which are constructed from a basic wooden frame and fencing material or netting, or created using thin bamboo canes or other branches from your garden. 

When placing trellises or other such structures, it is a good idea to consider the shade that these may cast on other areas throughout the day and throughout the year. It is also a good idea to affix them in such a way that they can easily be moved when you require to be able to do so.

Bear in mind that the shading from a trellis may sometimes be beneficial, and also that trellising could be used to compartmentalize a covered space to create different growing areas with conditions suited to different plants. For example, you may create an area towards one end of a polytunnel or greenhouse that is more humid than the rest of the space by partitioning it with a trellis.

Cordon Wires & Canes

Simple cordon wires suspended from above, or garden canes planted in growing areas could also allow you to grow more plants in a smaller area by allowing plants to be tied in and grown vertically rather than being allowed to bush-out and sprawl. Tomatoes, for example, are one common plant that can do well when cordoned. 

Another simple vertical gardening structure that can work well is a tipi or wigwam-like structure created from bamboo canes or other branches tied together at the top. Tipis can can effective ways to grow a range of beans, as well as other vining plants in a small bed or container.

Hanging Baskets & Other Hanging Gardens

Hanging baskets can be bought in a range of different styles, shapes and sizes, though gardeners should also consider their options for creating their own hanging containers. A range of reclaimed and recycled household items can be used for this purpose, such as old kitchen colanders, or old plant pots wired up with garden wire.

Plastic packaging from food and drink can also be used to create a range of hanging gardens. For example, you can string milk containers by their handles along a garden cane, with their top quarters removed, in order to create a more substantial hanging garden for crops such as herbs or salad leaves, or string half plastic drinks bottles along a wire.

Shelving Based Vertical Gardens

One of the very simplest ways to create a vertical garden system is to create shelves, which offer different levels for placing containers, or which can be planted up with salad crops and other quick and easy edible crops. When creating shelving, gardeners should remember that the lower shelves should still have access to enough light to allow plants to grow. However, it may be possible to take advantage of greater shading on lower shelves to prevent certain plants from bolting during the summer months, and to create different micro-climatic conditions for a wider range of species. 

Shelving created from wire netting or mesh could allow you to place small plant pots higher up while still allowing plenty of light to reach lower shelves. Porous shelving of this type could also reduce the amount of water you need, as water could drip down from higher shelves to sustain plants down below. 

When creating vertical gardens of any type, it is a more sustainable and eco-friendly option to avoid buying new materials but instead utilize materials that you may already have lying around, such as reclaimed bricks or stone, logs or reclaimed timber, or even household rubbish.

Pocket Based Vertical Gardens

A vertical space can also be used to create vertical garden structures with planting pockets. There are a range of different examples of vertical gardens with pockets that can be created easily and cheaply.

Many people, for example, create vertical gardens from wooden pallets lined with a fabric backing – the spaces filled with a growing medium. Fabric shoe organizer's with the pockets filled with compost are also often used. You can buy these from a range of manufacturers, or, with some basic sewing skills, you can make your own using scrap bedding or other material you may have lying around.

Planting Towers

You can use all sorts of household rubbish and reclaimed items to make stackable containers or tiered growing systems for your small spaces. For example, you can make simple stacks of plastic drinks bottles with holes cut in the sides for planting into, wired together using garden wire, to make flexible towers to plant up with a range of crops. 

These are just some vertical gardening ideas to help you get started. Use your imagination and you will soon see that you have the space to grow far more food where you live than you thought.