- Unlock vertical garden space in even the smallest areas.
- Learn how to construct a DIY living fence using containers.
- Discover the incredible diversity of plants, like ferns, perfect for vertical gardens.
- Gain confidence in growing beautiful, lush walls that transform your outdoor space.
Imagine walking into your garden and being greeted by a vibrant wall of green, alive with texture and life. This isn’t just a dream, it’s the reality of living fence container walls. In today’s world of shrinking garden spaces, finding creative ways to bring more plants into our lives is essential. Vertical gardening with containers offers a brilliant solution, turning fences, walls, and even narrow alleyways into stunning plant displays. It’s a fantastic way to maximize planting area and create unique visual interest.
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Why Choose Living Fence Container Walls?
Building upwards is a game-changer, especially in urban settings or small yards. A living fence container wall allows you to cultivate a significant number of plants in a confined footprint. Instead of spreading out, you stack your garden vertically, transforming a plain fence or wall into a dynamic, green feature.
Beyond saving space, these vertical gardens offer other benefits:
- Aesthetic Appeal: They create a beautiful, lush backdrop and can soften hard landscape features.
- Privacy: Densely planted walls can act as a natural screen.
- Improved Air Quality: Plants help purify the air around your home.
- Unique Plant Displays: You can group plants with similar needs together and appreciate individual specimens up close.
- Creating Microclimates: Different sections of the wall may offer varying light or moisture conditions, allowing for diverse plant selections.
For me, living walls also connect me to happy childhood memories of playing in wild, green spaces. Elevating plants like ferns brings that feeling back, placing them eye-level or higher.
Exploring Plant Diversity for Your Vertical Garden
Just like any garden bed, the success of your living fence container wall depends on choosing the right plants. One family of plants that excels in vertical, often shady environments, is ferns. Most people are surprised by the incredible variety within the fern family – from tiny, delicate fronds to larger, textured leaves, and even some that tolerate more sun than you’d expect!
A modern living wall structure built with wooden shelves holding black plastic pots
Ferns bring a unique, almost ancient feel to a space. Their intricate fronds are captivating, and many varieties thrive in the shade cast by walls or fences, making them ideal for these structures. Despite their delicate appearance, many ferns are incredibly tough and resistant to pests and diseases.
Three close-up images showing different fern frond textures: a finely cut green fern, a fuzzy silver fern, and a dark green fern with button-like structures
Showcasing the diverse shapes and textures of fern fronds suitable for a living wall.
Building a DIY Living Fence Container Wall
Creating your own vertical garden structure is achievable with a bit of planning and some basic materials. Our project, which we affectionately called our “living fence,” was built using fence posts and sturdy shelving designed to hold individual pots.
The concept was simple: build a freestanding unit against an existing fence that could house many plants in containers. We opted for standard 2-liter black plastic pots – black so they receded visually behind the plants, plastic to help retain moisture, and square so they fit snugly and didn’t roll. The shelves were angled at 45 degrees to allow plants to cascade slightly and ensure water reached the roots effectively.
Hand-drawn sketch showing a rudimentary plan for a vertical shelf structure
Living in a small urban space forced us to get creative. We had a narrow side alley with contrasting conditions: one side sunny, the other completely shaded by the fence. A vertical garden was the perfect solution to utilize the shady side, allowing us to grow shade-loving plants right next to sun-loving ones on the opposite side of the alley. This is a key advantage of using living fence container walls – you can tailor plant choices precisely to the microclimate of each section.
Selecting Plants for Your Living Fence
Once the structure is ready, it’s time for the fun part: choosing your plants! For our fern-focused living fence, we researched extensively to find species and cultivars suitable for growing in pots on a wall. We looked for smaller to medium-sized ferns that wouldn’t exceed about 60cm in height.
Some fern types that proved successful in our living fence container walls include:
- Dryopteris: These are classic-looking ferns, generally tough and reliable.
- Asplenium (Hart’s Tongue Ferns): Available in many cultivars, these are very hardy and well-suited to wall life.
- Polypodium: Many are epiphytic (meaning they can grow on surfaces like tree bark or rocks, taking moisture from the air), making them excellent candidates for vertical life.
- Adiantum (Maidenhair Ferns): Known for their delicate, often fluffy appearance, they are typically smaller and easy to grow in the right conditions.
- Blechnum (Hard Ferns): Some prefer acidic soil, but many are compact and fit well into a living wall, though smaller types are best.
- Cheilanthes (Lip Ferns): Interestingly, some varieties of these can tolerate full sun, offering options for brighter spots on your wall. Some may need winter protection.
- Pteris (Table Ferns): Medium-sized with attractive fronds, good for living walls but might need winter shelter in colder climates.
- Cyrtomium (Holly Ferns): Unique with holly-like leaves, quite tough but some grow quite large.
- Polystichum (Shield Ferns): Many varieties are large and tough, choose smaller cultivars for vertical gardens.
We learned valuable lessons about which ferns didn’t work. Acid-loving ferns like Athyriums struggled and died due to our alkaline tap water used for irrigation. Plants requiring extremely damp conditions, like Thelypteris, also failed if the pots dried out, even briefly. Being in pots on a wall makes them more susceptible to drying wind and sun than plants in the ground. Access to rainwater is a significant advantage for acid-loving or moisture-sensitive plants.
The Rewards of a Finished Living Fence
Seeing our living fence container wall complete was incredibly rewarding. We managed to successfully grow over 50 species and cultivars of ferns, creating a truly unique and dynamic feature in the garden.
A wide view of the completed living wall, a dense collection of green ferns on angled shelves
It brings a vibrant energy to the space, looking particularly striking even in winter when many other plants are dormant. Standing next to it, you get a real sense of being surrounded by nature, almost like stepping into a mini-jungle.
View from indoors looking out at the dense fern wall
Creating living fence container walls opens up exciting possibilities for gardeners of all levels, especially those working with limited space. It’s a testament to how creativity and a little DIY spirit can transform overlooked areas into thriving plant havens.
Close-up detail of various ferns on the living wall shelves
Another perspective showing the density of ferns and the shelving structure
An angle showing the scale of the living wall against the fence
Detail shot highlighting the different shapes and sizes of ferns used
Building this fernery was a dream realized, allowing us to bring a piece of the wild woodland into our urban garden. The potential for using living fence container walls goes far beyond just ferns; you could create walls of herbs, succulents, small edibles, or flowering annuals depending on the light conditions.
Pathway leading past the dense living wall towards a door
Up Close with Ferns for Vertical Gardens
While a full list of all 50+ types is extensive, here are a few close-ups showing the beauty you can achieve in your living fence container walls.
Close-up of delicate, finely cut fern fronds
Textured fronds of a fern variety planted in a pot on a shelf
Shiny, textured fern fronds in a pot
Close detail of a fern with unique, almost ruffled edges
Variety of fern textures side-by-side in pots on the wall
Deep green, elongated fern fronds
Close-up of a fern with a layered, structured appearance
Fern with spiky, architectural fronds
Bright green, upright fern fronds
Detail showing the fiddlehead, or unfurling frond, of a fern
A close up of a fern frond with visible spores on the underside
Close view of varied fern textures and colors on the living wall
Conclusion
Creating living fence container walls is a fantastic way to expand your garden’s potential, adding beauty, privacy, and incredible plant diversity to your space, no matter how small. Whether you choose a lush fern collection or another group of plants, the process is rewarding, and the result is a captivating garden feature you’ll enjoy year-round.
Have you built a vertical garden or living wall? Share your experiences and plant successes in the comments below! Explore our site for more ideas on maximizing your garden space.
