The Vertical Gardner

Lush, living facades are taking green credentials sky high as vertical gardens spring up in crowded cities. Note the 200-m long thriving wall of greenery integral to the Jean Nouvel-designed Musée du Quai Branly on Paris’ Left Bank. Not that upright gardens are limited only to grand settings in the City of Light. The BHV Homme department store sports a vivid tapestry of plant life in the busy Marais retail district. In London meanwhile, garden designer Patrick Blanc is leading the way with a visionary eight-story trellis at the luxe Athenaeum Hotel. It supports 12,000 specimens planted last April. “I leave horizontal gardens to others,” he recently told Wired magazine. “I only think vertically.”

Alicia Pyke