vertical gardens and modules in chicago?

i've been in some other cities and have seen places where they had vertical gardens, literally gardens done on the side of a wall. by far the most interesting i've seen was in saigon, an entire block had a wall that was just planters lined up in a grid, with the pots coming out at maybe a 45 degree angle ...and i find it interesting because the concept is so simple, what they did could be fairly easy to build yourself, but i figured someone must make something like it somewhere... everything i've been finding are these really fancy "modules" that are somewhat high design and usually not inexpensive. this could be done by building a criss cross of supports that hold regular pots.



http://www.flickr.com/photos/danebrian/4167480835/

though one disadvantage is the planters do take up 2'-4' of space off of whatever wall. one advantage for watering though is everything drips into another planter

i've been searching online and elsewhere for something similar but haven't had a ton of luck. today i was reading the dwell earth day edition (free online @ http://www.zinio.com/reader.jsp?issue=4 ... 2010&o=ext ..the ad i'm talking about is on page 15) and they have an ad for the Wally... http://cart.woollypocket.com/Wally-One

a wee bit expensive for what it is.. i could probably build my own something or other though.

i've also saw an article in the NYT or somethign somewhere, where someone built a daisy-chained top to bottom planter whereby they used plastic bottles that kind of fit into one another vertically, so you watered from the top and it filtered down to the bottom. this was an indoor inside a window concept that was kinda cool.

http://www.greenroofs.com/archives/green_walls.htm is kind of an interesting article on the matter too

but does anyone else have suggestions for ways to do vertical planters on a wall? are there any publicly viewable gardens done this way anywhere? where i'm at now is a bit limited on planter space, but i have two walls that get decent sun that i'd like to somehow take advantage of ... it would be more ideal if whatever it is was a large rigid grid and each planter didn't need screwed in like the wally does.

I saw something on this on Victory Garden, the PBS show shown on WYIN which is Channel 21 on my Comcast. Perhaps you can find something in the archives, sorry I can't remember more, it was shown over a month ago.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/victorygarden/

I have a friend who created a green wall in his garden for herbs - it's quite beautiful; it's a freestanding wall, though. Just from a quick observation of it, I think it was pretty simple in design: just an outside framework of wood not dissimilar to a stud wall, and the space where the drywall would go is filled in (IIRC from the interior) with stapled-on burlap. The inside space was filled with potting soil, and then he cut slits into the burlap to introduce the plants. I'm guessing that there's some sort of framework to support the burlap, but I don't really remember it.

Anyone used the Topsy Turvy? Any luck?

I reverse-engineered a topsy-turvy (I hate the way those things look!) this year: I took two coir planters and wired them together in a ball/egg shape, and planted a tomato (and one tomatillo) both at the top and at the bottom. I lost one of my bottom tomatoes (it was dicey anyway) to rot from all the rain, but the rest of them are doing just fine.

No idea how things will progress, but only one of the tomatoes I planted was determinate, so I'm guessing things may not work out as well as they would have if I hadn't had an excess of seedlings I hated to waste.

I have two tomatoes planted in those things and I feel they are crying out from a head rush, I think I'll leave them in there anyway I have four in the ground anyway. I'd like to see if they will give me something or not.

Many have tried and failed to make vertical indoor farming work. One Chicago entrepreneur thinks he can do it.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/business ... story.html