The Benefits of Living Walls

A living wall does something that most garden planting cannot.

It brings a significant amount of greenery into a space without taking up any of it. No floor space used, no border required, no trade-off with the layout you have already planned. The planting sits on a vertical surface and the rest of the garden stays exactly as it is.

Pride Landscape & Design

Garden Design Team

Outdoor kitchen and dining area with living walls. Built onto the wall rather than taking up floor space, it keeps planting close to where it gets used.

That is the basic practical case for them. But it is not the only one.

What a living wall actually does in a garden

Hard surfaces dominate most modern garden designs. Porcelain paving, timber decking, rendered walls, slatted fencing. All of them practical, all of them good-looking. But without planting to balance them, a garden can start to feel flat. The materials are right, but something is missing.

A living wall introduces texture and depth to surfaces that would otherwise stay uniform. It draws the eye, softens the harder lines and gives a garden a layered quality that takes years to achieve through conventional border planting. Positioned near a seating area or along a boundary wall, it changes how that part of the garden feels without changing the layout.

There are practical benefits too. Plants naturally filter the air around them, absorbing carbon dioxide and improving air quality near the wall. A well-planted external surface also adds a small degree of insulation. Neither effect is dramatic in a residential garden, but they are real, and they add up over time.

A louvred pergola and outdoor kitchen in the Barnsley garden. The living wall sits alongside the cooking area, softening the boundary without interrupting the layout.

The effect on how a space feels

There is something more immediate than the practical benefits, and it is harder to quantify. Being around planting changes how a space feels to spend time in. It is why a garden with established borders feels warmer and more settled than one that has just been laid out. The greenery does something to the atmosphere that materials alone cannot replicate.

A living wall creates that effect quickly, in a concentrated way, in exactly the spot you choose. Positioned next to an outdoor dining area, it makes the space feel more enclosed and considered, like a room rather than just a paved area outside the house. Positioned along a boundary, it softens a fence or wall that would otherwise feel like an edge rather than part of the garden.

“A living wall creates that settled, planted feeling quickly, in a concentrated way, in exactly the spot you choose.”

Where they work best

Living walls can be used indoors or outdoors, though the approach and planting selection differ depending on the environment.

Indoors, they work well in entrance spaces and rooms where people gather. The planting brings warmth into the room in a way that ordinary houseplants do not quite achieve at scale. Outdoors, they can be fixed to external walls, built into fencing or incorporated into garden structures. The key question is always light. The position of the wall determines what will grow well in it, and that affects both the planting selection and how the wall will look as it matures.

All of our living wall systems include built-in irrigation, which keeps the planting consistently watered without relying on hand watering. That makes them more straightforward to maintain than they look, and keeps the wall in good condition through different seasons.

Herb walls: a practical use near outdoor kitchens

One application that comes up regularly in our projects is a vertical herb garden positioned alongside a barbecue or outdoor kitchen area. It works particularly well because it is genuinely useful day to day, not just decorative.

In the Grimsby garden, the BBQ area sits directly off the patio doors as part of the main everyday-use zone. A herb wall was positioned alongside it, keeping fresh planting within reach of the cooking area without taking up any of the terrace space. It is a small addition in the context of the wider garden, but it earns its place because it gets used.

Mediterranean herbs suit this kind of installation well. They are tolerant of drier conditions, they do not need constant attention, and they tend to thrive in the sheltered spots that outdoor kitchens tend to occupy. Each section of the wall has its own built-in water reservoir, with a level indicator that shows when it needs topping up, usually once or twice a week.

Herb wall design, Grimsby. A small vertical planter positioned next to the outdoor kitchen area. Rendered prior to build.

Planning a living wall as part of a wider design

The most common mistake with living walls is treating them as an afterthought. They work best when they are considered early in the design process, not added once everything else is fixed.

Position affects planting choice. Planting choice affects how the wall looks through different seasons. The irrigation needs to be planned into the build. And the wall needs to sit logically within the wider layout, rather than feeling like it has been placed wherever there was room.

In the Barnsley garden, living walls were introduced alongside timber slat panelling to cover existing brickwork near the main seating areas. In Humberston, a bespoke corten steel living wall forms part of a walled secret garden at the bottom of the plot, paired with a water feature to create a quieter, more private space. Both were designed in as part of the wider project from the start.

That is where they tend to work best. Not as a feature to tick off a list, but as part of the thinking about how the garden is laid out and how different areas of it will be used.

The Humberston secret garden. The living wall is built into the water feature structure, combining two elements into one.

A considered addition to almost any garden

Living walls suit a wide range of gardens and budgets. The modular system can be scaled to fit a small section of fencing or a full external wall. The planting can be ornamental or functional. And the maintenance, with irrigation built in, is less involved than most people expect.

What they consistently do, wherever they are installed, is make a space feel more settled and more considered. That is not something you can always plan for. But it is something you notice every time you use the garden.