In Germany and Switzerland, many garden walls are built quickly out of gravel dropped into wire cages. It’s quick, it looks better than military grade concrete, and it gets rid of rocks you might not know where to put. This post is about flowers, but to give you some context, here’s what the rock thing looks like:

Basalt in a Cage Limberg

On the way up to the ruins of Limburg castle, at the end of the Kaiserstuhl wine region, a huge pile of loess sitting in the middle of Upper Rhine Valley and called, in true Austrian understatement (yes, it looked East once), the Seat of the Emperor. Most cages hold much smaller rocks, but when you want to show off your volcanic past, this is a good way. 

A clever town gardener in Wald, Switzerland, has adapted the technique to a more horticultural end. Here we are in the middle of town…

Island of Flowers

Complete with vertical elements. And don’t worry about the metallic look. I had to work hard with sight angles and photoshop filters to get the metal to show up in the photographs. In the open air it largely blends into the light.

No more messing around with weird, bent, rusted and collapsing tomato cages or bizarre constructions of pressure treated wood, wire, and drip hoses that look best only when observed at speed. Here’s a closer look…

Any Plant, Anywhere, Anytime

An entire new landscaping palette! Instead of sprawling along the ground or blowing in the wind and getting ripped to shreds, plants can grow here in a protected, vertical space.

Who needs a house wall, even, for a vertical garden? Simple, readymade technology to the rescue! Entire garden walls can be built in this way, for a few weeks, a few months, a season, or permanently. The flexibility is almost endless. The use of space is inspiring. And no rocks!