By: Fiona L. Mattson

Many of you saw our vertical garden (pictured below) at Ag Day. Here are some instructions for those of you that want to build your own!

Pipe and Soda Bottle Vertical Garden

There are many different variations to making a vertical garden and it all depends on how big you want your garden to be and what type of materials you want to use. You can make a garden from pallets, soda bottles, different types of pipe, and wood, as well as wire. The following pictures are examples of what your vertical garden could look like:

Wood Pallet Vertical Garden

Clay Pot Vertical Garden

Wire Vertical Garden (Good for climbing plants)

Shoe Organizer Vertical Garden

Instructions for the pipe-soda bottle vertical garden (like the one we made for Ag Day):

• Collect 10-30 2-liter soda bottles, depending on how big you want your vertical garden to be
• Lay each soda bottle horizontally and cut a rectangle out of each soda (this will be the “top” of your planter and where the plant will grow)
• Opposite of the rectangle cut 5 small circles horizontally. (These circles will be the bottom of the planter and will allow extra water to drain from the soil)
• With circle 1 and 5, thread wire and attach ferrules and stops to hold the soda bottle in place.

• Continue to add soda bottles with ferrules and stops and separate them about a foot apart, in order for enough space for plants to grow.
• The wire for our vertical garden is hooked on to a black fitted pipe structure. The black fitted pipes were twisted together to form the frame.
• Once the structure is in place, fill each soda bottle with soil and seeds or seedlings.
• Water and watch your garden grow!

Choosing the right plants for your vertical garden is important. Edibles such as lettuces and herbs are great for containers without much root space, as are inedible plants such as succulents. Although, our tomatoes are actually doing very well in their small confines!

Here’s our Vertical Garden, a few weeks after Ag Day: