Commissioned by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) for the 2025 RHS Hampton Court Garden Festival, the Vertigro Garden explores and celebrates vertical gardening in its many forms, demonstrating how bare urban walls can be transformed into living, breathing green spaces.
Designed to inspire and educate visitors about the opportunities for planting in urban and small-space gardens, the installation rises five metres, creating a striking architectural presence reminiscent of the city. The vertical structure showcases the scale, drama and unexpected beauty of living walls and vertical gardens, inviting visitors to look upwards and reconsider the potential of their surroundings.
The garden explores the distinction between traditional vertical gardening, which includes climbers and wall shrubs, and living walls: controlled growing systems that support densely planted arrangements within individual pockets or modules. While climbers can provide shade, habitat and environmental benefits, living walls offer opportunities for more complex and diverse planting compositions.
A central theme of the design is the relationship between architecture, planting and light. Strong architectural shadows cast by the five-metre walls contrast with the dappled shade created by plants with elegant, arched growth habits, reaching towards the light. A water feature introduces sound and movement, attracting wildlife and creating a more immersive atmosphere. The intention was to transport visitors beyond the festival setting, allowing them to become absorbed in the atmosphere of the garden.
Vertical gardens can contribute to urban environmental resilience by helping to insulate buildings, moderate temperatures and capture airborne pollutants. They can also provide valuable habitat for biodiversity, particularly when planting is carefully selected to support wildlife.
The project was developed in collaboration with Armando Raish of Life on Walls, from concept through to completion. Sustainability informed the construction approach, with scaffolding and decking selected for their potential to be reused. Following the festival, the installation was relocated and rehoused across residential projects in London, extending the life of the materials and planting beyond the event.
RHS volunteers acted as ambassadors for the garden, engaging visitors and explaining how vertical gardening could be applied to their own homes and gardens. BBC Gardeners' World also filmed the installation, exploring its potential role in cleaning polluted air and trapping airborne pollutants.
The Vertigro Garden demonstrates how vertical planting can combine architectural expression, biodiversity and environmental benefits, offering a practical and inspiring approach to the future of urban landscape design.
Elder 'Black Lace'- Sambucus nigra f. porphyrophylla 'Eva'; Taiwanese Schefflera- Heptapleurum taiwanianum; Cypress Spurge 'Fens Ruby'- Euphorbia cyparissias 'Fens Ruby'; Giant Herb Robert 'Guernsey White'- Geranium maderense 'Guernsey White'; Nasturtium 'Empress of India'- Tropaeolum majus 'Empress of India'; Wilson's Honeysuckle- Lonicera ligustrina var. yunnanensis; Ivy 'Sagittifolia'- Hedera helix 'Sagittifolia' ambig..
