I recently toured the Kemper Center for Home Gardening at the Missouri Botanical Gardens today (actually its been a month or so but who is counting). They have two Varden Vertical Garden Walls that have been in place for 4 plus years at this point, with one planted in perennials and the other planted with garden greens and herbs. The ornamental vertical garden is planted seasonally Spring cool season varieties, Summer heat loving varieties and finally for Fall and Winter color and texture. This years fall planting is stunning! Maybe the best work of living art we have seen! Take a tour for you ..read more

We have had the great fortune to be included in the filming of a new streaming television series!! Can’t mention much until it airs in spring 2020 but the pics are sure fun and more to come after the show comes out. Many thanks to our home town installation partner, Wilderness Walls for making the trip south to build these awesome vertical gardens on camera and in tight time windows! Check out the video in the post below. Our Varden Vertical Gardens featured in the filming, utilize Varden Trays and Varden Sleeves. The first home gets a facelift with a Varden Vertical Garden on the front of the ..read more

We are participating in a new research trial at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and their Environmental Science department. The most recent of many over the last 25 years! Very exciting and looking forward to posting about it as we go along. I visited the trial site last Friday and will have lots of info going forward. Check out our short introduction to the latest research trials at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville by their Environmental Science department. Initially they have set up 8 replicants to determine differences between growing vertical and flat orientation i ..read more

We started our company with the idea for our Varden Sleeve, coupled with our modular A-Frames. Our trays have gotten most of the attention up till now but we are beginning the rollout of the sleeves and frames to offer great variety in growing, display and selling applications. The 6’ tall version we exhibited at Cultivate ’21 this past week is the culmination of plenty of design, trial and error. Personally I am very pleased with the structure and ease of assembly the final version has achieved. Each set of frame components is custom made of aluminum and made modular by the use of repeating 3 ..read more

The pandemic changed so much for so many! In our case, it stifled sales and marketing progress due the the instability it created for our distributors and customers alike. For our collaborators, it halted many interactions, programs, new expansions and more. Here locally, our friends at the Missouri Botanical Garden were unable to staff and plant the Varden Vertical Garden walls in their Kemper Home Gardening Area and visitors were mostly kept away. We all lost the year but we are hopeful for some great growing collaborations going forward. They are one of our most important relationships. Our ..read more

Maybe you have heard of Victory Gardens and maybe you are aware that when food supplies became “insecure” during World War 2, American citizens created local, backyard and community gardens to supply a significant portion of food for our population at home. Here is a fascinating quote I read: “The result of victory gardening? The US Department of Agriculture estimates that more than 20 million victory gardens were planted. Fruit and vegetables harvested in these home and community plots was estimated to be 9-10 million tons, an amount equal to all commercial production of fresh vegetables. So ..read more

Our Varden Kits have been shipping far and wide lately and several have landed in regions of the country with high water pressures. In some cases the high pressures are above the ideal operating range of 15-25 psi for the drip irrigation parts included in the kits. The result can be fittings that pop off or water spraying at connections and junctions. Check out this helpful video below and know that we have searched for the ideal components for use in our Varden Kits, including pressure reducers. Rather that refer customers to local supply houses or big box retailers for fixes, we are now offe ..read more

Customer conversations this week have motivated us to shoot some new “how-to” video on planting a Varden Kit. The Vardensok are super easy to plant and we will drill into the finer points of planting from seed and live plug. Stay tuned for the final edited segments here and on our YouTube Channel in the next few weeks. The short clip below is just a start and gets our creative thoughts rolling. Tell us what you want to see and we can try to get the info and shot you need for a great vertical garden on your patio ..read more

My experience has been that using live plugs is the fastest way to get an excellent and productive vertical garden. That said, I still get a lot of satisfaction from planting seed directly into the holes cut into my Vardensok and watching the entire lifecycle of a plant. It really feels like traditional gardening too. One of the obstacles to vertical gardening in our system and many others, is the size of available live plugs and the availability of the species desired. Many garden centers and hardware stores carry live edible plants for gardeners but it’s really hard to find anything with a s ..read more

On the vertical side of our business we started out providing custom living walls based on the needs of building owners, interior designers and architects. Each wall being designed around a particular space and need. Same component set but the sizes changed and so did the light and water needs. We got the idea to create a smaller bite sized, entry-level offering by listening to visitors of urban farms and vertical gardening displays here in our home market of Saint Louis. Visitors loved the vertical plant growth and wanted to know how they could do the same thing at home. When we asked them th ..read more