Love the Living Plant Wall Trend? 3 Tips for Creating Your Own (2024)

With bold floral prints and themes coming back for 2024, now is the perfect time to add the most striking kind of decor to your space: a living plant wall.

Despite the name, plant walls don’t necessarily need to take up an entire wall (although if you’re dedicated, they certainly can). Many plant walls are designed within a large picture frame; this helps hold and contain the collection.

A plant wall is typically a frame that holds varieties of living plants that either don’t require soil to live or can grow at an angle in a suspended planter. You might be familiar with the kinds of plant walls that are on display in hotels, corporate offices, or even small businesses.

But what if you’re looking to adapt the plant wall for your own home? Here are a few things you’ll need to keep in mind.

Choosing Your Plants

Before you begin the work of selecting a space and frame for your plant wall, you’ll need to determine what kinds of plants you want to have on display. If you’re looking to create a wall collection out of indoor plants you already have, for example, you might need a wall frame that can hold pre-existing potted plants. If you’re willing to create an entirely new living wall, you still have a few options to choose from.

The biggest issue with an at-home living plant wall is the moisture component. You don’t want to be dealing with plants that require water and soil in a standalone frame on the wall, because you could end up damaging the wall itself. The simple fix for this? Plant walls that don’t require soil.

Air plant living walls are immensely popular because they’re the easiest kind of living wall to display and maintain. Air plants don’t need soil, so they can literally just sit out in the open air. This means that you can create a wall display without needing to worry about how you’re going to fit soil into the equation.

They’re also relatively easy to care for—depending on the kinds of air plant you choose, you’ll usually be able to lightly mist your living wall instead of giving it a thorough watering.

If you don’t mind sticking to angled potted plants, practically any large-leafed plants or trailing plants will also work well in a living wall. Arranging your individually potted plants close together will create the illusion of a fully-fledged plant wall; this also makes it easy to water your plants without damaging your wall, as you can simply remove them from their shelf to water them and allow them to dry off the wall.

The Framework

We’ll be the first to admit that the easiest way to create a living plant wall is to buy a pre-made frame online. This will ensure that any plants you fit into the frame will be secure. You’ll also be able to choose the size of the frame and the kind of pots or planters it can hold.

This gives you plenty of other options, too; you can select a standalone frame to fill with plants, purchase one that has pots or planters with it, or even buy a frame that comes with plants in it.

For air plants, a DIY frame is simple. All you’ll need is a picture frame of your preferred size and some string: wire, twine, chicken wire, or even rubber bands will work.

Weave the string of your choice through the picture frame to create a grate for your air plants (you can attach the string to the side of the frame using nails or thumbtacks). Then, you can simply suspend your air plants from the squares on the grate.

As for other living walls, you can use attachable planters to suspend plants on your wall; hanging them close together and using trailing plants to cover the front of the planters will achieve the living wall effect. You can also create framed shelves to hold planters or individual pots; this will allow you to arrange more planters in a smaller space for a fuller effect.

Caring for Your Living Wall

Low-maintenance plants make living walls relatively simple. If you’re working with potted plants, choose plants that don’t require constant watering; that way, you won’t have to constantly be adding and removing plants to your plant wall.

If you decide on an air cactus wall, you’ll primarily want to care for your living wall by misting it or occasionally removing the air plants to soak them.

Placing the living wall somewhere it can get light is important too; just because your plants are acting as an art arrangement doesn’t mean they can go without a little sunlight. For potted plants, following their regular care regimen (pruning, fertilizer, watering schedules) is also important.

Debating whether or not a living wall is for you? Starting with a small frame or shelf arrangement can help you figure out your plant care routine and how the wall fits in your space. If you’re planning on an enormous living wall arrangement, you can even find frames that come with built-in irrigation, although this isn’t exactly a cheap plant renovation project.