In our urban world the ground - the horizontal landscape - is precious, in short supply. In contrast, there is a large supply of vertical landscapes totally unused except as the outside of a container like a building or a freeway. The hard surfaces of all these walls, facades and concrete barriers do their best to diminish the quality of life in a city. They bounce back noise, create their own wind patterns, increase summer temperatures and permit pollution to travel far.
Enter Patrick Blanc, the French botanist who used his extensive knowledge of plants to create living walls of breathtaking beauty and wondrous possibilities:
http://www.verticalgardenpatrickblanc.com/
We think about his ideas mostly for indoors, bringing a garden inside, but what if we applied the concept to the outer world?
Imagine then a different city: buildings draped in greenery, erupting in flowers in the spring and summer. The plants temper the climate by moderating temperature and airflow. They dampen noises.
Urban gardeners adapting to growing vegetables and fruit on the vertical spaces of houses. Their bounty a welcome addition to the local markets.
Green barriers all along our urban streets planted with specially cultivated plants that absorb pollution, calm the surface winds and absorb storm run off.
Imagine the beauty of such a city, its air perfumed with flowers, enriched with oxygen and cleansed of pollutants. Maybe the birds would come back to live among us. Maybe we could even hear them sing again. Would we be healthier in body and spirit?
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