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Easy and User-Friendly Ideas of Vertical Gardening

Vertical gardening is one of the most innovative and unique way of decorating your work site and house. It is one of the easiest and confinement ways of gardening in your house, without using enough space. Creating these living walls is fun, especially when you are crafting them for an urban space.

There are many ways of creating living walls; you can either buy readymade vertical gardening kits from the market or can also opt for some easy do-it-yourself projects. Creating your own living wall is a daunting task for many, but little innovation and excellent ideas can help you build a masterpiece.

Here are some easy and user-friendly ideas of creating vertical gardens:

Framing Plants:

Framing pictures of your own and your family members for decorating the walls of your workplace and house is common, but framing a garden and using it to decorate your wall is something very creative and outstanding. These vertical gardens can act as a masterpiece of your living room or reception, helping you to bring a change in the look of your property.

Hanging Planter:

Another interesting way of creating a living wall in your house is by making use of wooden planks. Hang around six or seven wooden planks in a row with ropes. Cut out holes in the plant, such that pots fit inside those holes easily but make sure that there is a minimum gap between two pots. Grow whatever plants you want in those pots and place them in the planter to give it an all-new look.

Gardening In Crates:

Instead of throwing away the wooden boxes and crates from your house, use them to create something unusual and extraordinary. Make them a part of the garden and enhance the look of your house. place the old and unused crates in a pyramid shape and decorate them with colorful and varied plants creating an innovative structure.

Beatification of Ladders:

If not crates and planters, you can also make use of your old ladder to create a vertical garden. This is one of the easiest and less constructive ways of creating your own living wall. Place the heaviest pots at the bottom and the delicate ones at the top. You can also color the ladders to make it look more beautiful and impressive.

Ornament your house with vertical gardens. No need of extra spaces, because now you can grow plants even on your walls other innovative areas.
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How To Decorate Concrete Gnomes and Other Garden Ornaments

Usually, when a concrete garden gnome or ornament is hand painted, it is not long before the paint begins to peel and the ornament looks shabby. The following method of decorating overcomes this problem and allows the ornament to age gracefully. Instead of peeling, the paint may wear away in time, giving an old established look, rather than tatty and worn out. What is more, at any time during this aging process, you can re-paint it straight over the existing paintwork.

Step 1

Blackwash the ornament. Paint the ornament with black emulsion paint -- suitable for outdoor use -- which has been diluted with clean cold water to the proportions: three parts paint to one part water. The proportions are not critical. The secret is to make the paint just thin enough to partly soak into the surface, thus giving it a firm key on the cement. When painted, it should look like this.

Step 2

Remove surface paint. The paint should be dry to the touch within about half an hour and is then ready for phase two. Rub the surface with a sponge sanding block dipped in clean cold water, removing all the paint from the high points. Wash off surplus paint as you go. Once the surface paint has been removed, it should look like this.

Step 3

Color your ornament. For the coloring, use colored powder paints or the colored powder used to color cement. 
While the excess water is draining from the ornament, take an old jam jar and pour in about five fluid ounces (150ml) of cold clean water and add about a dessert spoon of PVA glue. Stir thoroughly.
Find something that will take a small amount of each of the powder paints you have available. An egg box or an oven bun tin are particularly suitable as each compartment can house a different color powder, allowing you to dip your paint brush in various colors and mix them on the palette. Use an old plate or paint tin lid as a mixing palette.
Wet the paintbrush with PVA solution then lightly dip the brush in the powder paint. Mix the paint on the palette adding more water or powder as necessary. Then apply the paint to the cement surface. More water or powder can be added directly to the item you are painting to obtain the required density of color.
Any paint runs can be wiped off with a dry cloth and the smeared area painted again. Here is an example of a finished ornament.

Step 4

Create the best color. As with water coloring, one color can be added and fused with another to obtain the desired effect. The density of color should be such that the original blackwash shows through, thus highlighting all the fine detail. Any concrete ornament lends itself to this form of decorating!

Leave the ornament to dry for at least an hour then give the surface a coat of the dilute PVA solution to seal in the paint and give the surface a slight sheen. The more PVA you add to the water, the more pronounced the sheen.
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