Orchids on living green walls (Planted Pillars)
 

I've recently become very interested in doing some indoor vertical gardening:


http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8205/8...8163af14_b.jpg


As I've been doing some terrariums lately, many of which include orchids:

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8065/8...62977e10_b.jpg



So combining the two ideas, I really wanted to have some indoor orchid exhibit. I started by trying a few species of orchids on my green wall: Masdavallia auropurporea, Scaphosepalum rapax and Lepanthes yunckeri. The L. yunckeri did well but I wanted it in the terrarium so I snagged it off before too long. The others rooted in about two weeks and lasted a month on the green wall. As the larger leaved plants started creeping up towards them, it was time to build something new.

I call these Planted Pillars, it's essentially a tube shaped living green wall. They have all internal drip irrigation and are made of 100% recycled material green wall fabric. The first one has been set up only a week now, but I'm really pleased with it. All lighting in the images here is done by means of PAR 38 LEDs, which I use on all my planted projects. They indeed grow plants very well. Here's some images of the prototype Planted Pillar:

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/49521122@N06/8177411461/]http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8068/8...72866694_b.jpg


[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/49521122@N06/8177442432/]http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8199/8...14ce3b1f_b.jpg

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/49521122@N06/8177442648/]http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8480/8...d771f1f1_b.jpg

I wanted to share these as I thought it may be a new growing style that people may be interested in. I post regular updates of my projects on my Planted Glass Box facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/plantedglassboxes

I don't want to post anything related to sales here, but if you go to the facebook page and contact me I can provide that type of information there.

Thanks for looking, hope you enjoy.

Nice setup, but it is not new...
Maybe for you but this kind of setup has been around for years in the orchid growing community...

The ones I knew before were the clay tubes or Epiweb/Ecoweb. This is fabric which is a bit different. I don't mean to imply this entirely novel, just a new take/style. Sorry, I'm not too involved in the orchid community, I grow some at home and see more in the wild.

It looks interesting, but do they reliably flower every year (especially those near the bottom)?

This looks great! Hopefully it will be enough light for the orchids at the bottom. I'd love to see how your wall progresses over time.

In my terrariums I regularly reflowed plants. I've flowered two on the wall, and one other in a paludarium I have that utilized a similar drip system. The pillar has only been set up for one week so far so I can't speak to blooms for some time. The lighting is misrepresented in the cell phone photos, it's indeed quite bright.

That looks wonderful. At a home and garden show, I saw 6 or 7 foot pillars like this for outdoor landscaping. This is a nice size for indoors.

That's cool! Could you tell us which brand/model of LED it is if you don't mind? Are they expensive?

Nice! Are those plant LEDs over the tubes?

Cheers.
Jim

The LEDs are ones I got off Ebay just doing a search for PAR 38 LEDs. The dominant spectrum is 6000k, so not a traditional plant bulb by any means, but I've been using them a few months and all sorts of tropical plants are growing really well with them. I know LED conversations often open a can of worms so I'll only express my observation with them over the 96 watt PCs I used previously. I visually find the wavelength to be more like when I've had to move a terrarium and had it outside in daylight, I also found that plants (including orchids) have responded positively to them. I have a lot of absolute irradiance measures from different forests and I haven't compared them to the bulbs to compare peak wavelength, but we all know a limitation of LEDs is their lack of spectrum. So as with all indoor lighting, take this experience with a grain of salt.

I'm going to be making more of these pillars if anyone would like to trade orchids for one I'd be most happy to do so. I'm mainly interested in quite small, warm tolerant Pleurothallid type species, especially Lepanthes. Last year I converted a wine cooler to grow highland species but since I'm still traveling too much I had to get rid of it so I'm only focusing on terrarium-warm species.

I'm also curious to see how these do over time. Your work with the garden walls really is quite stunning, so I have high hopes!