Tropical Vertical Gardening Experiment

I got inspired by The Rainforest Garden in the idea of setting up a vertical landscape garden. It was a situation when you got lots of plants but lacking display space. (too many plants and too less of a garden space would create a messy, unkempt - jungle look in the garden)

And I was also in a situation where I got everything under the sun theme and I need to focus with working out to bring the impact that I often look for - sort of create an ambiance where you feel good whenever you are in the garden (kind-a-feeling)

Yep, the ferns have to go. Its either throw away or give away situation. They don't fix well in my theme coloured garden. And so, this was a great idea of display. The good thing about ferns is they can really take the abuse. They can be over watered (but not water-logged) and would survive without soil. As you can see - the whole thing is a root-ball mass which easily fit into container spaced compartments.

I had set this up during the Chinese New Year holidays - its about a week now and they are doing fine. My greatest concern is that the whole soil & root mass might just flop & drop when watering. The other challenge is watering - too much water loosen the root support, lack of water dries up the leaves. The Bird Nest Fern are enjoying their new location as they sprout out new leaflets.

I had added Jewel of Opar in the selection to give some colour in the green selection and they simply look pretty good in the collection. The plants that are in this collection:

a) Bird Nest Fern
b) Drawf Petticoat Fern
c) Fluffy Ruffle Fern
d) Basket Plant
e) Jewel of Opar
f) Wandering Jew (Green Tradescantia)
g) Zebra Tradescantia
i) Joyweed

The most challenging moment is hammering the nails to support the wooden frame. It took awhile for me to handle the issue (guess I'm not good in being a carpenter) The wooden frame is actually a fruit crate. I had stapled a layer of plastic sheet to hold the soil and placed small containers to hold the root-ball mass inside them.
Sometimes, it is an issue of trial & error. And I foresee that eventually some species in this collection might overwhelm other species and that others might slowly disappear.

Of course - at the end of the day, it looked nothing like what the Rainforest Gardener proposed.
(lol) Well, I guess - it happens when you work with your own style and ideas. I wanted to use coconut shells and husk but it happened to be during the holiday season and getting them from a sundry shop is going to be a long wait (you can get all the husk & the shell for free as they are thrown away at the end of the day)

I have managed to really reset my garden during the whole Chinese New Year holiday week . It was also the issue of doing & setting a pot at a time, telling myself not to overwhelm and get up set or panic in seeing the whole mess. Amazingly I marvelled that I did manage to do some clearing work - doing little by little and eventually made some visible progress.
(I will upload my overall garden picture later)

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Wishing a Prosperous & a Garden Full of Overwhelming Beauty

to all who celebrate this Chinese New Year!

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