Patrick Blanc and The Hanging Gardens Of Paris

Usually dressed in green, with green hair and a green thumb (literally), Patrick Blanc is part-scientist, part-landscape architect. Having become hooked on botany as a teen, he combined a passion for botanical science with an artistic vision. He had seen orchids growing off the trunks of trees, and other species growing off rocks and cliffs, and realized that plants did not need to be limited to growing only in soil. Armed with an encyclopedic knowledge of flora and its growing habits, he set out to create living masterpieces using simple, repeatable methods.

Blanc’s incredible designs are thanks to his own patented technology (the Mur Végétal), enabling plants to be grown without any earth. Unlike the plants themselves, the “soil” in which they grow is neither natural nor biodegradable. Blanc uses a combination of PVC and polyamide felt, which are capable of supporting many plants’ root structures easily. Whereas soil would erode or simply fall off – damaging the building on which it sits – Blanc’s device should last for hundreds of years.

Blanc chooses his plants very carefully, leaning on his vast botanical knowledge and his work at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. While much of the theory seems quite simple (plants that prefer shade at the bottom; plants that like direct sunlight at the top), his success is hard to replicate. He told the Wall Street Journal, “I know all the different plants. It takes other people a lot longer to do what I do and even then they don’t necessarily achieve a good result.” One key to the process is to embrace diversity. When hundreds of species are utilized, insects and other pests struggle to take hold.

Patrick Blanc’s innovation has seen him complete projects all over the world, including erected the tallest vertical garden in the world in Sydney, Australia. Luckily, Blanc is French, and there are plenty of vertical gardens to be found all over Paris.

This one you can’t visit. Blanc lives in Ivry-sur-Seine, just outside Paris to the southeast, in what would appear to be a dilapidated old factory space. Inside is his very own vertical garden masterpiece, with more than 250 plant species growing off the walls. It’s even home to birds, lizards and frogs. “To complete the feeling of a small natural paradise, aerial roots from vines hang like a curtain in the center of the room, while the glass floor of his spacious office area covers an aquarium with fish and aquatic plants.” It seems just about the perfect house for a revolutionary landscape designer/botanist, who is trying to bring nature into an otherwise concrete jungle.