As our living walls are natural (organic soil substrate and real plants) and are essentially vertical gardens, they do need water just as any plant or garden needs water.  As living walls are vertical, the irrigation of them happens a little differently to how you’d water a pot plant or your garden.  Therefore with every project we install an irrigation system, which feeds water into the soil through a dripper pipe, running along the top of every module.  This ensures healthy growth of the plants.

We work with the client to schedule the best times for maintenance to minimise any disruption.  For example, if the living wall is on a high street or in a shopping centre, we could carry out our visits in the early hours or at night to limit disruption during the day.  A good example of this is the project at M&S Cheshire, where we have multiple living walls in the car park.  All our visits are carried out between 4-7am to limit disruption to shoppers and workers.

The access requirements for maintenance depend on the living wall and location.  For any living wall over 6 metres high, extra equipment is required for the twice-yearly horticultural husbandry visits.  This could be a cherry picker, scissor lift, scaffold tower, spider lift or even access by abseil.

The only time the substrate in a green wall will need to be replaced is when we replace a plant.  In this case we add the substrate removed with the plant back in.  We allow for 5% of plants being replaced every year under maintenance (due to climate change and ageing).

To ensure your living wall plants can grow at a high level, you need to focus on selecting the right species for the location, for example catering for greater exposure to wind and sun.  As always, it’s down to plant selection and design.

There is no maximum height to which a living wall can be installed, however there are limiting factors such as fire regulations and access.