The first "living wall" east of Vancouver and north of New York was unveiled last week at the NSCC Waterfront Campus in Dartmouth.
The project, which includes 7,000 plants with a variety of colours, textures, flowers and berries, is on display along the front of the new Centre for the Built Environment.
Although the 24.5-metre-long garden is now visible from Pleasant Street, the building itself won't be open to students until September.
Tim Amos, faculty member with NSCC Kingstec, has been involved with the project since it began with a feasibility study a few years ago.
"We've developed the entire system from the irrigation system through to the soil, the planting bags, the grid, the baskets and the plant list," said Amos.
The wall has 17 ornamental species, such as begonias, daylilies, hostas, and seven native species, such as the horsetail, bunchberry, winterberry and some ferns.
"We've tested them all in a trial cube and so far they've got through the winter really well," said Amos. "The proof now is in the pudding. They're being planted early, so in September when the school opens, these will be full and nice. We already have bloom on some of the daylilies and hostas. So this is only a week old and the plants are settling in."
The plants are all perennials and the wall is expected to change with the seasons.
"Time will tell, just like any garden, there'll be some success and some minor failures, but we can pull plants out and put them in. It's all good. There are some plants that grow underground runners, so they'll pop up in other places, which is kind of fun. We don't know how the wall will look, but it'll morph into another look, like gardens do."
He said the wall offers numerous benefits to the community, as well as the school's students.
"Look at Pleasant Street, the people driving by are going to see this beautiful, beautiful picture on the wall," said Amos. "This will be a little wildlife corridor. It's going to cool this part of the environment, it's going to scrub the air and it's going to make people feel good. This could be a blank concrete wall, but it's actually a garden living on a vertical space."
NSCC president Joan McArthur-Blair helped students complete the wall last week.
"This living wall demonstrates the capacity of the Centre for the Built Environment to help Nova Scotians study the renewable energy and green technologies that are essential to our sustainable future," said McArthur-Blair.
"I helped propagate the very first plants for this project when it was still just an idea and now, here we are seeing it come to life," said Roelof van der Merwe, a second-year horticulture student.
This is might be the first living wall, but Amos said they'd like to build others. "You could take any concrete wall anywhere and do this," he said.
85 plant species were tested and of these 24 species were identified as suitable for the living wall.
- More than 14,000 plants were propagated in the two years leading up to the final planting of the living wall.
- The living wall is approximately 24.5 metres long and 3.6 metres tall.
- The wall contains 7,000 living plants
- The wall is designed to fill in as it grows and change with the seasons
