Photography by Megan Lorenz
Betsy Cuneo
Avid gardener Betsy Cuneo was searching for creative ways to bring nature into her home, turning to all the usual sources such as Pinterest, shelter magazines, and garden websites, with little luck. Inspiration finally struck one evening while she was out to dinner at Peno, in Clayton, where she spotted a 4-by-6-foot wall fashioned entirely of leafy green plants.
The structure, sometimes referred to as a “varden”—or vertical garden—is the creation of Webster Groves resident Mark Woolbright, who designs and builds them at his company, Verdant Technologies. A varden is mounted to a wall and outfitted with aluminum casings, plastic trays, drip lines, and mesh “socks” in which to grow plants.
A serial inventor and self-described tinkerer, Woolbright received his first patent 30 years ago for the invention of a retaining wall that holds pockets for soil. Since then, he’s refined his products to fill gaps in the marketplace, collecting more than 10 patents along the way.
“Add plants to anything and it will improve…human health, worker productivity, air, insects, runoff, pollution, and urban cooling,” says Woolbright. “Everything gets better when plants are around.”
Although the benefits of keeping plants close are anything but new, the popularity of houseplants has blossomed, especially over the past year as homeowners have sought plants and gardens as a means of bringing the calming and aesthetic properties of nature into the home. “There is a trend toward indoor plants on social media, especially among millennials,” says Daria McKelvey, a supervisor at the Kemper Center for Home Gardening at the Missouri Botanical Garden. “Those who don’t have families or space for pets might have a big houseplant collection. Plants allow you to interact with something living. They allow you to add color and vibrancy to your life.”
Photography by Megan Lorenz
Cuneo installed two of Woolbright’s walls in her Clayton home, one, which she’s filled with cooking herbs, in the kitchen and another, this one in a tropical theme featuring Maranta, peace lily, and pothos, in the living room. “The lights and drip lines are on a timer and controlled by an app on my phone,” she says. “Once a week, I fill the trough for the drip lines, but other than that, the walls run themselves.”
Cuneo likes the walls for their functionality and beauty: “I use the herbs that grow in my kitchen while I’m cooking, and the wall in my living room is beautiful—it’s like living art.”
Danielle Zavradinos, Peno’s general manager, says the wall’s prominent location helped inform its aesthetic. “We picked out a stainless steel finish to match the kitchen,” she says. “The plants make a scroll-like design on the wall, with long-stemmed parsley and spiky, droopy chives. The placement of the plants makes a really cool wave pattern.”
Woolbright has devoted his life to greening the built environment. He first designed the vertical garden walls for use in office buildings, but after he saw how people were using them to grow food and herbs, he refocused the company’s mission to offer prefabricated wall systems that ship nationwide.
“So many homeowners and urban farmers are using our products to grow food,” says Woolbright. “There’s something special about getting to harvest your own food but also experiencing the beauty of watching it grow.”
