Green Walls & Vertical Gardens Workshop

What you'll learn

Learn how to design and install your own green wall or vertical garden with our gardening short courses in Sydney!

A green wall is a vertically-built structure intentionally covered by a variety of plant species, from indoor plants to succulents as well as traditional climbing plants. Whether you're tight on space or need to create some screening to provide privacy on a patio, deck, or balcony, vertical is the way to go!

Vertical gardening uses upright growth habits or containers to make the most of your growing space. It's a technique that works indoors or out. Brighten up a kitchen or bare wall indoors, and add screening and colour outdoors. You also can grow a vertical kitchen garden near your back door or pretty up a dull or ugly exterior wall. The sky is the limit to what you can do when you're growing up!

Many different types of houseplants, annuals, perennials, and shrubs work well in a vertical space, so you're not limited to what plants you can use. Adding window boxes, hanging pots, or a garden structure such as a trellis also provides additional exterior vertical growing space.

So, get creative with your space, capture that free solar energy, and convert it to a fragrant flower wall, impressive herb garden, bonsai collection, or a cherry tomato micro-farm! In this hands-on workshop, your experienced tutor will work with the spaces of your garden areas to help you to plan and design your green wall.

Join this workshop to explore the options and select the vertical solution that works for you. It's time to bring the beauty of nature upward with sustainable urban gardening!

Learning outcomes

By the end of this Green Walls & Vertical Gardens course, you should be able to:

Determine the appropriate types of green wall and/or vertical garden for your space.
Draft and develop a green wall installation plan.
Select the final green wall/vertical garden materials required.
Prepare for the vertical garden installation.
Construct and install your green wall landscaping.

Course content

What will be covered in this Green Walls & Vertical Gardens course?

What do green walls look like?

The wonderful diversity of garden options and garden types — from inner-city small space gardens that can include fresh herb gardens and high productivity micro-farms for vegetables
Inexpensive, high-impact, colourful, healthy and productive options
Evaluation of different installation options

The range of green wall types

Heavy-duty – concrete,
Medium-heavy – wood, metal,
Lightweight – plastic, fibreglass, resin, polythene, felt
Re-purposed & up-cycled containers

Vertical garden containers

Pots and containers
Why the sizes of containers matter

Simple, sensible, reliable growing techniques

Practical methods for healthy maintenance
Oxygen, aeration, drainage, filtration
Watering, irrigation, fertilising & pruning

Design and construction

The practical aspects of design and construction (planning, layout, materials, budgets, structural & physical aspects) to progress the design plan into a practical reality.

Practical outcomes

Discussion on the availability of tools, labour, materials and equipment, and matching concept plans to realistic outcomes.

Intended audience

Who is this Garden Landscaping course for?

This course is for people who want to explore the possibilities of green walls and vertical gardens, and want to know about what's involved in installing green walls before starting a garden installation project. It is for people who want more out of their garden, want to fix an eyesore wall, wants to make productive use of their spaces, teach the kids to grow and maintain plants, or people who simply have no space for a herb or vegetable garden on the ground in their yard.

Course venue

Rozelle Campus

2A Gordon Street, Rozelle NSW 2039 (corner of Gordon St & Victoria Rd in the grounds of St. Joseph's Church)

Course materials

What to bring to class

Bring to class a rough sketch/ drawn plans of garden spaces.
And rough measurements of garden spaces (tape measure, metre-long stick lengths, iPhone measurements)
Gardening gloves (tight fit is better for gardening work)
A face mask (to protect against potting mix/garden soil bacteria like Legionella)
Sharp secateurs / garden snips/scissors or kitchen scissors
Small hand spade tool
Small bag to carry small pots
Wet weather gear / sun hat if required

Course testimonials

Margaret said: Very knowledgeable tutor, lot of practical application, in a very pleasant group.
Margaret said: I enjoyed the workshop, it was very sociable and inclusive of all individuals.
Madeleine said: Interesting.. I learned a lot about the basics of green wall gardens. Could be extended to 2 workshops.
Pauline said: Practical and clear. Gave me the confidence to start my project of herbs on the wall of my kitchen. As always, Rick was knowledgeable, patient and focussed on student needs.

Course tutors

This course has no current classes. Please join our waitlist and we will notify you when we have places available. Join waitlist for Green Walls & Vertical Gardens Workshop