Bring Life to Outdoor Walls With Nature's Green

4. Pair decorative metal panels with leafy greens. Metal screens featuring geometric patterns mixed with foliage plants create a bold garden statement. In this California garden, vines grow up the sides to frame the panels.

Here’s another example of a metal screen mixed with planting. This time the plants emerge from a built-in planter at the base of the screen, helping to anchor it more in the overall design.

6. Create a planted wall pattern. Geometric patterns made from trained evergreen vines look fancy and aren’t too difficult to achieve if you don’t mind frequent clipping.

Start by establishing your desired pattern with wires fastened with nails or eye hooks to the desired wall or fence. Then, plant a vine like trailing ivy or confederate jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides, Zone 8) to grow along the lines of the trellising, cutting or rewrapping any shoots that stick out from the structure.

Here, Asian jasmine (Trachelospermum asiaticum, Zone 8) was trained in a diamond pattern to cover the wall of a guesthouse in New Orleans.

8. Mount a staghorn fern. Staghorn ferns (Platycerium bifurcatum) are air plants, called epiphytes, and have evolved to grow without soil on tree trunks and branches in mild, tropical and semitropical climates. They can thrive in home gardens in similar conditions, mounted to a board with a few handfuls of damped sphagnum moss. Hang one inside or out to liven up a blank wall in a spot with bright, indirect light.

Learn more about growing staghorn ferns

9. Add an elegant espalier. Training a tree into an espalier against a wall adds a formal touch to a garden or courtyard and saves valuable planting space. You can purchase a tree already staked as an espalier or train one yourself, if the tree is between three and five years old and still has finger-width-sized lateral branches.

If you’re planning to train the espalier yourself, plant the tree against a wall and add trellising to support the espalier structure. Then, choose the primary lateral branches (often in matched pairs for a symmetrical form) and gently pull them down into straight, horizontal lines, fastening them to the trellising. Remove other lateral branches and cut the top part of the trunk where it meets the top of the trellis to encourage lateral growth.

10. Allow trailing plants to cascade off the roof. Place potted plants on flat-roofed sheds and outbuildings, allowing vines to trail down the sides of the building for a creative, unexpected look. Place roof pots on saucers to catch excess water or make sure the roof is sloped enough for quick drainage.

11. Frame wall art with plants. Wall art doesn’t need to be reserved to rooms inside the house. Outdoor seating areas backed by a blank wall are great spots for hanging a wall sculpture designed for outdoor use, an interesting piece of driftwood or a decorative wrought iron panel. Plants growing on either side of the art piece can soften the design and grow up to frame the art.

13. Showcase architectural plants. Take advantage of a blank wall to show off structural plant forms. Look for plants like large-scale cactuses or multitrunk trees that naturally have an interesting shape. The landscape designer for this Los Angeles garden used a curved entry wall to show off the form of spiked MacDougall’s century plants (Furcraea macdougalii, zones 9 to 11).

Your turn: What have you done to liven up blank walls in your garden? Tell us or show us with a picture in the Comments.

More
How to Turn an Ugly Wall Into a Feature
Work with a landscape architect near you