Green house
Sometimes modern living entails bringing the outdoors indoors
As the nights get colder and the days get shorter, it’s approaching that time when you need to make your home a sanctuary from the elements. House plants are the simplest way of doing this but why settle for simple? What will really impress the neighbours is an entire wall of greenery. Living walls have been around for years on the side of theatres, galleries and hotels with sustainable aspirations. The National Gallery famously recreated Van Gogh’s A Wheatfield with Cypresses using a living wall on the side of the building in 2011. London’s largest green wall can be found outside Rubens at The Palace Hotel in Victoria. Spanning 350 square metres, it contains 10,000 herbaceous plants including buttercups, crocuses and strawberries.
Indoor living walls, however, are a recent addition to the world of interior design. Don’t jump on the bandwagon lightly, though – they can be incredibly timeconsuming to install and maintain. The wall usually comes in crates that are assembled and filled with soil before being hooked up to an electrical water feed.
A significantly less messy way of bringing nature into your home is to install a false living wall. Interior designer Roselind Wilson found herself decorating a basement kitchen of a house in Eaton Mews, Belgravia, with no natural sunlight. She hired specialists Bright Green to install faux greenery along the back wall to give the dark space a spruce. “The technology has improved so much you can’t tell the difference,” she says. “People wanting to bring the outside inside is a symptom of having less space – lifestyles have changed and this is a reaction to that.”
Interior living walls are available from Plantrite from £600psqm, plantrite.co.uk. Faux living walls are available from Bright Green from £498psqm, brightgreen.co.uk