Design your life to include more money, health and happiness with less stuff, space and energy.

Design your life to include more money, health and happiness with less stuff, space and energy.

5 Small Space Gloves for Your Green Thumb

Adding plants can bring warmth, life and oxygen to a small space. But the general lack of floorspace and flexibility of where you can place your planters makes small space gardening tricky. In the past few years, a number of innovative vertical planters have hit the market. These planters are perfect for small spaces as they free up floorspace and allow you to turn any wall–some light requirements permitting–into a garden. Here are a few.

Urbio

urbio

We use Urbio‘s clever planter systems in the LifeEdited apartment. Urbio’s polypropylene plastic vessels come in a variety of shapes and sizes, all of which have super powerful neodymium magnets embedded on their backsides. We attach them to our kitchen wall, which is steel clad, but Urbio sells the units with a baseplate that can be hung on any wall. Urbio is not limited to plants. You put pens in them, mail or any small object really. Prices start around $15 for the basic “shorty” model.

Plants On Walls

plants-on-walls

For the slightly more hardcore green thumb, the succinctly-named Plants on Walls offers a number of interesting home gardens that could fit into tight quarters. On the low-end, they have several PET plastic “Florafelt” planters. You insert your plants in the pleated pockets and over time the plant roots work their way into the felt, creating a vertical plant bed. Prices start at $59.

plants-on-walls-recirculating

On the high end, PoW has their recirculating systems, which include water tanks and pumps to create self-sustaining gardens. Starting at a mere 6″ deep, these vertical gardens don’t take up much room. PoW touts the air purifying and sound deadening properties of these plant walls. They’re also good for people with blacker thumbs than green. All this is a good thing as a 3′ x 5′ unit (their smallest) will run $2K.

Light + Ladder

light-and-ladder

We saw these a while back at the NY Now Gift Fair. With ceramic pots and leather and rope straps affixed to wood hooks, L + L are a more upscale version of the Urbio concept. Prices start at $45.

GroVert Vertical Garden

grovert

At $35 for an 18″ high x 8.5″ wide planter, the GroVert Vertical Garden provides a simple, inexpensive way to start your vertical garden.

DIY

diy-planter

No, DIY isn’t a company. You use old soda bottles, Ball jars or even shoe organizers (pictured) into the basis of your vertical garden. Just find anything fairly water tight that prevents soil from falling on the ground. Then find something to put the planters into that mounts on the wall. Water, light, repeat.