After a few days of installation this past week, the vertical garden, or “living wall” as it’s being called, made its debut along the west-facing facade of the Saks Fifth Avenue store in the 150 Worth shopping center.
The process of planning the garden wall, however, was more than a year in the making, said landscape designer Jorge Sanchez, principal of Sanchez & Maddux, the island firm overseeing the landscaping aspects of the soon-to-be-completed $15.8 million Worth Avenue streetscape renovation project.
$250,000 project
“The concept of bringing a living wall to Palm Beach was introduced to our town by Betsy Matthews, recent past president of the Garden Club of Palm Beach,” said Cindy Hoyt, current president of the organization, which has committed $50,000 toward maintaining the Worth Avenue living wall.
The total cost of the wall was about $250,000, Hoyt said.
“Betsy first saw a living or green wall in Charlotte, North Carolina, that was created by the French botanist Patrick Blanc,” said Hoyt. “She envisioned a green wall with a rich, lush tapestry of living plants for Palm Beach, and spoke with a number of people in town about her vision and introduced them to the idea.”
Sanchez was one of the people Matthews approached. “It was well over a year ago, right at the time we were initially planning the landscape elements for the Worth Avenue project,” said Sanchez, who agreed with Matthews that Palm Beach should be on the forefront of garden design with its own vertical garden.
Blanc, based in Paris, was contacted by Sanchez, but the cost of engaging him was prohibitive, so the landscape designer did research on vertical-gardening designers closer to home and found GSky, an award-winning Vancouver firm that has created green walls and roofs throughout the world.
To help matters, it turned out that GSky’s design and service manager, Deborah Kotalic, works out of Delray Beach.
“Finding GSky made the whole process much simpler,” Sanchez said. “We have been very pleased with the collaboration and the high level of service they’ve provided.”
Kotalic has designed several living walls in South Florida, though the Palm Beach wall is the first in the county, and, measuring 840 square feet, one of the largest GSky installations.
The GSky designer worked closely with Sanchez and Garden Club members Matthews, Hoyt, Mary Pressly, Pat Cook and Beth Dowdle in coming up with the cascading curvilinear design for the plant wall.
Sutble, sophisticated
“Our initial designs were pretty bold and colorful, but it was agreed upon that we’d take a more subtle and sophisticated route in Palm Beach,” said Kotalic, who has worked on more than 20 installations of living walls across the United States and Canada. “The design features a few native species, which Sanchez and the Garden Club insisted upon, and emphasizes textures and movement,” she said. “It’s really all about different shades of green,” she said of the composition.
Assisting Kotalic during the installation that began Monday were project manager Takashi Sawarda from GSky’s Vancouver office and George Kotalic, the West Virginia-based GSky foreman, along with several local workmen.
Eleven plant types
The 11 plant types featured in the wallscape were grown at Michaels Nursery in Boynton Beach in 840 specially designed foot-square stainless-steel containers. They clip onto the steel structure erected at the site. The 24-foot high, 36-foot wide grid was installed several weeks ago by Hedrick Brothers Construction. It was built to specifications provided by GSky.
The plants, which are watered through a specially designed zoned drip-irrigation system controlled by computer and take root not in soil, but in a coarse felt-like growing medium, will be looked after by Guardian Maintenance of Delray Beach, which has developed an expertise in the care and feeding of living walls through its association with GSky projects in Florida.
“We will be here at least twice a week, probably more, during the first few months after installation,” said Dick Brown, one of the principals of the family-owned Guardian firm. “After a while, when the plants have settled in, we’ll probably only need to come once a week to keep the wall in good shape.”
‘Striking, important’
“The living wall is a striking and very important addition to the Avenue’s landscape,” said Sanchez, who chose the site for the vertical garden specifically to cover what he thought was a particularly unsightly wall in a triangular plot that was awkward in appearance.
Sanchez & Maddux outfitted the space fronting the wall in what Hoyt refers to as “pocket park” style, with a bench, shade trees and a sodded area that is designed to be more inviting to pedestrians and Avenue strollers.
“This is one of the most visible corners in town,” said Sanchez. “Most people who come to Palm Beach, and many of the locals pass by the intersection of Worth Avenue and South County Road several times a day, either in cars or on foot, so we felt it needed to look more special than it had in the past.
“The wall will evolve and change over time, which is quite exciting really.”
Designer Kotalic agrees, and emphasizes the fact that passers-by should expect to see the wall — “a living thing, after all” — filled in completely in about six months.
“The plants need to get acclimated to their new spot,” she said. “The fascinating thing about these walls is how they change from day to day, week to week, and get a life of their own.”
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