Product Summary

New York City has 34 square miles of roof space, but over 3000 square miles of vertical surface. Leaf Island can cover all of it.

In order to change our urban environment for the better, green infrastructure must scale properly. It must become ubiquitous and be integrated into every reasonable situation. In this regard, vertical surfaces offer much more opportunity than even rooftops. Yet, due to their engineering complexity, green walls are less common than green roofs.

Our team looked at why previous green walls weren’t working and the problem was fairly simple: weight, water supply, and cost. When you’re building vertically, you’re fighting gravity the whole time. The taller the green wall, the more challenging the design. This results in tiny living walls adorning lobbies, or free standing “screens” used as provocative art, but nothing that would make a meaningful difference for the environment. These traditional green walls use trays, hydroponics and felt as a substrate, but because of all the water and material held vertically, these end up being unimaginably heavy. As with many things, nature has already solved this problem. They tend to cost as much as $100/square foot – not exactly practical for most clients.

The Trellis™ Green Wall System uses a corrosion-resistant stainless steel frame threaded with stainless steel cable to create a trellis that is either attached to the ground or the parapet of the wall. This steel trellis is extremely strong, and extremely lightweight as it uses far less material, does not contain any substrate, and does not hold water.

We then plant native vines within a planter at the roof or ground level next to our trellis. This planter is supplied using greywater, rainfall or HVAC condensate outflow and contains all of the water and GaiaSoil that the vines will ever need. The vines will naturally climb the trellis and completely fill out the structure with green space.

If you’ve ever watched ivy climb the wall of a building, you’ll notice that it requires no human assistance. Our Trellis™ Green Wall System keeps ivy off the walls, but gives you all of the ecological benefits of dense vegetative cover.

Trellis™ Area is our green wall solution to covering large vertical surfaces. This ultra strong, lightweight- frame can be secured to walls up to 100 ft high and anchored along the edges for lateral stability in case of high winds. Vine planters are located on the roof at the foot of the trellis frame.

Trellis™ Curve gives you the ability to bring green walls to underpasses and other irregular structures. Our flexible frame secures to the corners of any structure, and the cables bend around its surface. Vines will grow from the GaiaSoil planter at the base of the structure.

Trellis™ Sky gives you the ability to cover with an overhanging wall of green. Our unique frame can be mounted to the parapet or railing of a balcony and the GaiaSoil vine planters will do the rest. Trellis™ Sky keeps your balcony cool and provides shade, while increasing its aesthetic value significantly.