Not everything is turning green and pink this spring:
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Green, or ‘living’, walls became rather trendy a few years ago – more an indicator of intent than a substantial contributor to a sustainable development. But they’re pretty.
That is, when they live. In the case of the one at the southwest corner of Davie and Howe, it didn’t.
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So what now?
This could be a classic maintenance issue. Woodwards was supposed to have vines on the railings but it would require several thousand dollars in upkeep. Condo strata boards have been very reluctant to pay such costs. This may be the case here.
The green wall phenomena is a classic “right plant, right place, tons of maintenance” issue.
I have been watching the green wall on the north side of Whole Foods at Cambie and 8th Avenue being cared for-and replanted frequently. As in the case of so much of this technology in the infancy stage, it looks great when planted…but without the proper maintenance and replacement, can look tatty very quickly. A cool idea, but I would be reluctant to buy a building with this technology in place. Better for businesses and governmental buildings that can afford the maintenance and make the decision when it is time to pull the plug.
The example posted is so uniformly dead, brown, and shriveled that I can only presume the strata turned the water off. Some die off is normal but a wholesale failure like that has got to be because the irrigation is off or broken.
Woodwards wasn’t a strata cost issue, the plants didn’t take, some of it due to the some irrigation nozzles not working, but even were they did work most of the plants died. Unfortunately the living wall concept is still in it’s infancy and there are guinea pigs in the process. Hopefully the kinks get sorted out with time as they are a great concept.
Go the old fashioned way – just have vines crawl up the conrete wall.
The best recent example are the vines on West 6th on the north side of the Best Buy / Canadian Tire building. Those are growing really fast with (presumably) little maintenance.
A very important thing to remember is that green walls are alive; living systems, and they need routine care. Plants, like all living things require regular cleaning, grooming, pruning, nutrients and functioning irrigation system (and of course various factors such as location, lighting, etc). The green wall over at Whole Foods on Cambie is one of GSky Plant Systems’ work. They’ve dealt with challenges with the building’s vents, which was causing the ‘dying’ of some plants. However, like Sandy mentioned above, they’ve worked through these challenges with constant maintenance checks to try and keep the wall in their best condition as much as possible. I pass by the area here and there, and it’s always looked great.
Jane Jacobs said about Vancouver that it has a lot of concrete-and also said that Vancouver could be improved by having more vines cover the concrete. She felt that architects had perpetuated a myth that climbing vines destroy concrete. There are a couple of classic greening/vining examples on buildings-the seniors’ housing near the south side of 12th and Oak is one, where vines have climbed up storeys on the west facing concrete wall. The guest’s comment above is cogent, there are ways to provide cooling and greening with climbing vines planted in terra firma, not appended onto a wall.