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Vertical Gardening: Grow Up, Not Out, for More Vegetables and Flowers in Much Less Space Paperback – April 26, 2011

by Derek Fell (Author)

4.6 1,068 ratings

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The biggest mistake gardeners make each season is starting out too big and then quickly realizing their large plot requires too much weeding, watering, and backbreaking labor. Vertical gardening guarantees a better outcome from the day the trowel hits the soil—by shrinking the amount of "floor" space needed and focusing on climbing plants that are less prone to insects, diseases, and animal pests.

Notable author and gardener Derek Fell has tried and tested thousands of varieties of vegetables, flowers, and fruits and recommends the best plants for space-saving vertical gardening. His grow-up, grow-down system also shows which ground-level plants make good companions underneath and alongside climbing plants. Best of all, many of Fell's greatest climbers and mutually beneficial plants are available in seed packets in every local garden center.

With a mix of DIY and commercially available string supports, trellises, pergolas, raised beds, skyscraper gardens, and topsy-turvy planters, the vertical garden system reduces work, increases yields, makes harvesting easier, and can be practiced in spaces as small as a container or a one-by-four-foot strip. Vertical Gardening features 100 color photos of the author's own vertical methods and showcases beautiful, troublefree perennials, shrubs, vegetables, annuals, and fruit perfect for this new, rewarding way to garden.

Print length

336 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Rodale Books
Publication date

April 26, 2011
Dimensions

6.54 x 0.71 x 9.16 inches
ISBN-10

9781605290836
ISBN-13

978-1605290836
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From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

DEREK FELL is a writer and photographer. His garden, art, and travel books have more than 2.5 million copies in print, and his photo library numbers more than 150,000 images. He lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, at historic Cedaridge Farm, where he cultivates an award-winning garden of flowers, fruits, and vegetables.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

What Is a Vertical Garden?

CHAPTER 1

I'd like to welcome you to a garden where vegetables, flowers, and fruit all grow, climb, and twine upward to create a beautiful landscape that saves space, requires less effort, produces high yields, and reduces pest and disease problems. Whether your goal is armloads of flowers, a bountiful vegetable garden, or a productive fruit harvest, I'll show you how narrow strips of soil, bare walls, and simple trellises and arches can be transformed into grow-up or grow-down gardens with just a few inexpensive supplies or purchased planters. I've been testing gardening methods in my own 20-acre garden at Cedaridge Farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, for 20 years, and I want you to discover the same delights and benefits of vertical gardening that I'm enjoying.

Vertical gardening is an innovative, effortless, and highly productive growing system that uses bottom-up and top-down supports for a wide variety of plants in both small and large garden spaces. There are hundreds of varieties of vegetables, fruits, and flowers that are perfect for growing up freestanding and wall-mounted supports and in beds or containers.

Best of all, vertical gardening guarantees a better result from the day your trowel hits your soil--by shrinking the amount of garden space needed and reducing the work needed to prepare new beds. Chores like weeding, watering, fertilizing, and controlling pests and diseases are reduced considerably, while yields are increased, especially with vegetables like beans and tomatoes. A vining pole bean will outyield a bush bean tenfold. Moreover, a vining vegetable is capable of continuous yields--the more you pick, the more the plant forms new flowers and fruit to prolong the harvest. A bush variety, by contrast, will exhaust itself within 2 to 3 weeks.

A Japanese wisteria vine twines upward through the canopy of this small- scale replica of Monet's bridge. The long flower clusters offer an intimate and fragrant resting spot while viewing the water garden at Cedaridge Farm.

With vertical gardening methods, you'll also discover that many ground- level plants pair beautifully with climbing plants, so you can combine different types of plants to create a lush curtain of flowers, foliage, and bounty. With a mix of do-it-yourself and commercially available string supports, trellises, pergolas, raised beds, Skyscraper Garden trellises, and Topsy-Turvy planters, vertical gardening saves a lot of time and work, lessens backbreaking tasks, makes harvesting easier, and is perfect for any size space, from a patio container and a 1 x 4-foot strip of soil to a landscape trellis and the entire side of a building.

LAYING THE GROUNDWORK

I first encountered a successful no-dig garden at the Good Gardeners Association in Hertfordshire, England. I visited the home of the group's founder, the late Dr. W. E. Shewell-Cooper, in 1970, when I went to interview him for an article in Horticulture magazine. On my return to the United States, I also discovered The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book, which was one of the first books that advocated a system of no-dig gardening through in situ (in place) composting. Stout explained how she created planting beds by putting down newspapers to suffocate existing weeds and grass; piling on layers of organic waste, such as spoiled hay and kitchen scraps, as mulch to decompose; and then planting directly into this compost. This system of gardening has appealed to many people during the past 40 years, even though its focus has been gardening horizontally.

Many no-dig plots based on Ruth Stout's book have been established in public demonstration gardens, including one maintained by the ECHO Foundation (Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization) near Fort Myers, Florida. The foundation began its first no-dig garden in 1981, which remained in continuous production for years as a vegetable garden in the middle of what had been a lawn. It was never plowed, cultivated, spaded, or hoed. Around the same time, engineer-turned-author Mel Bartholomew introduced his own concept in his book Square Foot Gardening, which promoted raised beds and intensively planted crops that allowed gardeners to grow more in less space. Mel has convinced millions of gardeners around the world to switch to easy no-dig raised beds. And then along came Patricia Lanza with her blockbuster book Lasagna Gardening. After struggling to amend the soil in her gardens, she, too, realized that layering compostable ingredients was the best way to start new garden beds, and she's been growing flowers, vegetables, and herbs for years in her "lasagna" layers.

For the past couple of decades, I've studied, tried, and implemented gardening systems that produce better results in less space with less work. Many no-dig methods were developed specifically for gardening horizontally, but I've found that these same no-dig techniques are even better suited to vertical gardening. With vertical gardening, plants require much less space than plants that grow horizontally, so those same layering techniques are even more efficient when used in conjunction with the small-footprint beds I recommend. While most no-dig systems suggest that a 6-inch depth of fertile soil is adequate, I prefer a soil depth of 6 to 12 inches in a raised planting bed, because vining plants generally have more vigorous root systems than dwarf plants or plants grown horizontally. Plants grown in 6 to 12 inches of fertile soil respond magnificently to that extra soil depth by delivering maximum yields.

THE BENEFITS OF GROWING VERTICALLY

If you've gardened in long, horizontal beds for even a single growing season, you've probably thought to yourself, "There has to be a better way." Well, you're right--there is a better way. Vertical gardening offers many advantages over horizontal growing.

Smaller beds to prepare and maintain. When growing plants with a vertical habit, you'll need a bed only as large as the root systems of those plants-- one that's much smaller than a traditional bed. When you plant horizontally, you tend to have narrow rows of plants and wide swaths of soil between them. It's those wide swaths that drink up much of the water, send up innumerable weeds, and consume the nutrients needed by your plants. With vertical gardening, you prepare only small spots or strips of fertile soil--just enough to give plants a nutritious base from which to climb up supports. These vertical garden beds require less compost, fertilizer, and water, and only a few bucketfuls of mulch or a little black plastic to control weeds. Compost goes further when you cut back on bed space, so you won't need to buy, generate, or use as much compost in order to amend your soil each season. And whether you plan to water with a watering can or use a drip irrigation system, you'll find that watering your small plots of soil is a cinch, and your drip hose can be short.

A simple vertical garden is perfect for a paved or soil surface, 2 feet wide x 4 feet long, with room for four vining plants such as a tomato, cucumber, climbing spinach, and pole bean.

I'm an advocate of no-dig beds, because I've seen the results others have achieved, in addition to my own successes. You can easily create a no-dig bed by spreading homemade or store-bought compost onto bare soil--or onto a layer of newspapers to kill surface weeds or turfgrass--and leveling the new bed with a rake. Spreading compostable layers on top of your newspaper weed barrier will create a fluffy, nutrient-rich planting bed (the method called in situ or sheet composting).

To compost in situ, I make sure my newspaper layer is at least 15 pages thick and that the edges overlap like the scales of a fish. This excludes light from the ground beneath, killing grass and weeds. On top of this, I generally place a 6-inch layer of grass clippings, a 6-inch layer of shredded leaves (I use a lawn mower to shred them), and then a layer of kitchen waste (often including banana peels, eggshells, fish bones, and potato skins). This stack is then topped off by a 1/2-inch layer of wood ashes. Other good composting ingredients include well-rotted animal manure (like cow and horse), sawdust, shredded newspapers, pine needles, and hay. Hold the sides of this in-situ compost bed in place with boards, landscape ties, or even stones or bricks.

Skyscraper structures can be assembled above a raised bed to create a freestanding unit, ready for edible vines such as pole beans and indeterminate tomatoes or flowering vines such as morning glories and climbing nasturtiums.

Do-it-yourself supports and trellises. While vertical gardening depends on a variety of supports and trellises, you'll find that it's easy to make your own. I make many of my own trellises from bamboo canes that I grow myself, or from pencil-straight pussy willow stems. It's simple to take canes or willow stakes and space them 1 foot apart to make posts, and use thinner, more pliable canes threaded through them horizontally to make strong, good-looking trellises. You'll see lots of examples of homemade trellises in the photographs in this book. Of course, ready-made trellises are available from garden centers, large hardware stores, and even big-box discount stores. Sturdy metal ones are suited for heavier vines, like melons and winter squash. In this book, you'll also discover the Skyscraper Garden trellis, a post-and-netting support I designed specifically for growing vegetables and flowers vertically. Skyscraper Garden trellises can be freestanding or wall-mounted and can be grouped in raised beds to create an efficient, highly productive, and attractive gardening space.

At Cedaridge Farm, I've created long raised beds and use Skyscraper Garden trellises to support vining crops above low-growing foundation vegetables and herbs.

Vertical pots and containers for very small spaces. If you don't have any (or much) garden space--say, just a concrete patio or a balcony--or if you can't easily amend your soil or build a raised bed, then consider using tower pots or other containers that help you grow upward in a column. Tower pots are commercial containers that stack one on top of the other and enable you to grow vertically a variety of plants that don't vine (such as lettuce, peppers, and strawberries). Plus, you can easily add trellises and supports within containers or "planted" just behind containers to create a vertical garden in a limited space. And if you need to be really creative with garden space, try mounting containers at various heights on a fence or wall to create a visual vertical garden.

New plant varieties to explore. The choices of climbing plants may surprise you. Among the vegetables, try growing climbing spinach (it's heat resistant and tastes even better than the regular cool season spinach), trellis-loving snap peas with edible pods, and the fabulous climbing 'Trombone' zucchini that produces a vine 10 feet tall and loaded with fruits. All of these grow up, not out. Vining cucumbers, single-serving vining melons, and even sweet potato vines are all suitable for growing upward, instead of sprawling outward across the ground and consuming more space than you can easily care for during the season. And if you've ever grown vegetable spaghetti (also known as spaghetti squash) in a traditional garden, try growing it up a trellis instead: Allowed to grow across the ground, vegetable spaghetti is an aggressive vine that will suffocate anything in its path; but when it's grown up a trellis, it shoots skyward with tendrils that grasp latticework or garden netting, producing up to a dozen fruit on a vine.

On this shady fence, wooden buckets are mounted at various heights with strong metal brackets and feature lush plantings of fuchsia and impatiens for an appealing vertical flower garden.

You may even find that vertically grown vegetables taste better. Bear in mind that all that vine foliage collects more chlorophyll than a bush variety of the same vegetable, and this may help to promote better flavor. It is said that the French Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir had such a refined taste for good food (his wife, Aline, earned a reputation as one of the finest cooks in France) that he could tell the difference between snap beans grown on poles and those grown on dwarf, bushy plants, because to him the vertically grown beans had superior flavor. Based on my own experience, I agree with him! Of course, the king of vegetables--the tomato--benefits from growing vertically, especially those varieties classified as indeterminate (with vines that can reach 20 feet or more) in seed catalogs and on plant labels. When you look at world-record harvests for tomatoes, all of the winning plants were staked to grow vertically, with some growing more than 25 feet high, producing hundreds of fruit from early summer to fall frost.

You can try many new plant varieties in your vertical garden. Using a strong trellis or a bamboo support and heavy-gauge garden netting, experiment with the edible gourd 'Cuccuzi'; long, straight fruits develop when the fruit is allowed to hang.

One of the bigger benefits of vertical gardening is being able to grow many different fruits against a wall or along wires or a split-rail fence. Of course, vining fruits like grapes and hardy kiwifruit are ideal, but so are berry crops with long, flexible canes like blackberries and raspberries. Even fruit trees with strong, sturdy trunks have pliable side branches that can be trained to grow flat for long distances against a wall or fence. This practice, known as espalier, significantly reduces the amount of space needed for a generous harvest of apples, peaches, pears, and other orchard trees--and reducing the growing space footprint is one of the tenets of vertical gardening. Be aware that many fruit trees are sold in standard, semi-dwarf, and dwarf sizes, referring to the mature height of the tree. For espalier in a home garden, the semi-dwarf and dwarf are most suitable, producing full-size fruit regardless of the extent of dwarfing.

Flowering vines also tend to be everblooming and provide armloads of flowers for cutting. Sweet peas, nasturtiums, and morning glories will produce curtains of color planted in a short row to climb up garden netting (either attached to a sunny wall or strung between posts as a freestanding trellis). Grow all three together for an incredible kaleidoscope of color. Then explore the dozens of other choices of upwardly mobile and cascading flowers and vines to create a garden that's filled with interesting "living walls," dividers, and curtains of foliage. See the two chapters on flowering ornamental vines (annual vines as well as the perennial and woody vines).

This small-space, nonstop vertical garden is created by positioning a Skyscraper Garden trellis in a 12-inch-deep raised planter box, with a 6- inch-deep planter box on each side. Look at how productive a vertical garden can be! Four varieties of climbing vegetables (such as cucumbers, pole snap beans, tomatoes, and vegetable spaghetti) are growing on both sides of the garden netting in the deep bed, and non-vining foundation plants (such as bell peppers, herbs, and lettuces) are thriving in the shallower beds.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1605290831
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Rodale Books; First Edition (April 26, 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781605290836
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1605290836
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.27 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.54 x 0.71 x 9.16 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #64,626 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #35 in Container Gardening (Books)
- #97 in Garden Design (Books)
- #99 in Vegetable Gardening

Customer Reviews:
4.6 1,068 ratings

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Derek Fell

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DEREK FELL is the author of more than 100 works of non-fiction including books and calendars, dealing mostly with art, travel and gardens. Born and educated in England, he became an American citizen in 1970 and began a series of gardening books. This led to a series of acclaimed works about the gardens of the great Impressionist painters, Renoir, Monet, Cezanne and Van Gogh. This led to a biography about Vincent Van Gogh, 'Van Gogh's Women' and a co-authored cookbook, 'Monet's Palate Cookbook.' His most popular garden books include 'Vegetables - How to Select, Grow and Enjoy,' 'Grow This,' 'Vertical Gardening' and 'The Gardens of Frank Lloyd Wright.'

Derek is winner of more awards from the Garden Writers Association than any other person, and he was a consultant on vegetable gardening to the White House during the Ford Administration. Derek is married, with three children and three grandchildren, and lives at historic Cedaridge Farm, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He also owns a property on frost-free Sanibel Island, Florida where he cultivates a one-acre tropical garden a block from the beach. There he grows mostly tropical fruits such as coconuts, bananas, mangoes, avocados and macadamia nuts.

Derek's mentors include O. D. Gallagher, a World War II war correspondent who taught him to write; Harry Smith, horticultural photographer who taught him to photograph gardens; and David Burpee dean of American seeds-men, who taught him a great deal about gardening in the US when Derek worked six years as Burpee's catalog manager.

Derek has written hundreds of garden articles, illustrated by his own photography for leading publications such as Architectural Digest, the New York Times magazine and Connoisseur. Contact Derek at derekfell@verizon.net.

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Keena M

Good information, small print

Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2024

Verified Purchase

This book has some really good information but the print is very, very small.

Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2024

Would not recmend.

Earnest, straightforward and helpful

Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2011

Verified Purchase

This is a good, interesting resource. However, don't expect a riveting read. It is just a Puritan-ethical serious as you might think. The illustrations tend to look a little ramshackle (i.e. the neighbors would b!tch), but the principles are great and could easily be used in dressier, more neighbor-friendly ways. There are some pretty unsubtle pitches for the author's own hardscape products, which was a little bit offputting, but on the whole this is a good idea book. After all, no one is ever going to write a book about how best to use my specific garden in my particular neighborhood! I would say this is a better book for promoting thoughts about vertical gardening than for adoptng as verbatim recommendations, but after all, creativity is the fun part of gardening! I do feel that I need to say that if anyone is considering purchasing it specifically for information about the potato-tomato plant as I did, it isn't the book you want; the idea here is growing one up and one down to support each other, not to grow a fantastically useful hybrid.

40 people found this helpful

Helpful

JW Needleworker

Vertical Gardening by Derek Fell

Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2013

Verified Purchase

I recommend this book for everyone! Whether you only have space for containers on a patio, a 12 inch space against a south, east, or west wall, or a garden plot with rows and rows, you can benefit from the information in this book. Did you know that you can grow 10 times more green beans when growing a pole snap bean than when growing a bush bean?

I grew my first garden this past summer at my new residence, but the garden space wasn't enough for what I have plans to grow. My hubby said we can't make a bigger plot, so I am thrilled while reading this book, realizing that many of my space problems can be easily solved with a little effort and cost. Cost depends on our choices of the materials that we use and I intend to grow bamboo for many of my structures. The author explains various types of bamboo that he likes for best appearance.

Other added benefits are the saving of water while growing a lot more of whatever you want to grow, less work of weeding, no more back breaking work picking green beans and such low to the ground, easier pest control, better flavor of produce...and so much more.

You can grow in an 8 square foot vertical space what you would normally grow in a 24 square foot horizontal space. My husband says that food taste better when vertical growing and Derek Fell explains that the plants contain more Chlorophyll, which improves the taste of the plants. He also shares how to grow tomatoes on top of the ground and potatoes directly underneath in the tomato root system.

This book contains information of how to use various items to build your structures to grow up and not out, which plants produce an abundance supply, and tidbits of wisdom from years of experience and experimentation are sprinkled throughout.

My mother gave me an advertisment that she received concerning this book and I am so glad that she did! It's going to prove invaluable to me!

28 people found this helpful

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Arthur Daigle

Very useful

Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2018

Verified Purchase

Vertical Gardening proved to a most interesting book. The author discussed many ways to grow plants at eye level and above for a variety of locations and income levels. There are helpful suggestions for dealing with problems such as diseases and insect, controlling weeds and otherwise keeping plants healthy. Different sections deal with food producing plants, flowering vines and others best known for their foliage. Color photos in the book were high quality and attractive. While the book is inexpensive, I feel it is well worthy owning.

12 people found this helpful

Helpful

Kathleen Loreena Martell

It is written by someone who actually has worked at length with vertical gardening w/ great success.

Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2023

Verified Purchase

It is well organized and thoughtfully written. It has a lot of photos, both black & white & color. The author did not just rewrite what everyone else has written.

Helpful

Cuba Rodriguez

Not Exactly What I Was Looking For...

Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2018

Verified Purchase

I've bought a few books lately, all in the gardening section. I looked for the highest ratings, but verified the ratings by reading the reviews, both good & bad. Well, I was looking for a book to give more ideas for Vertical Gardening. I already garden, have many different plants.. vegetables, fruits, flowers and fruit trees. I'm looking to utilize more vertical space, so I have more room to grow more.

I have only a few sections in my yard where I have a good amount of unobstructed sun, perfect for food growing. My trees are all in containers for now, so that I can continue to shuffle things around, trying to have everyone happy. I'm getting rid of many of the decorative plants that hardly contribute to the pollinators as well.

This book goes into Vertical Gardening but I found a good part of it for decorative purposes... covering cabins, trees (which I don't agree with, I think the Ivy chokes them), gazebos or walls. This type of gardening is not very appealing to me. For one, I don't have the land for it. Secondly, I prefer gardening for food and planting for the beneficial insects as well. I get pleasure from the great scents and the beauty of butterflies or bees buzzing all around.

The other thing I didn't like about the book, most of the pages have no color. There is a small section with glossy, colorful photos, but they were more for the decorative vines, walls, & fountain views. Maybe about 20 pages worthof colorful photos... out of the 300+ pages. The rest of the pages are Black, White, & Green, however, there were tons of black & white photos throughout... I just wish they were in color to be able to see the detail better, or the colors of the foliage & flowers, there would be a more visible contrast with the trellis or whatever structure they were making an example of. I just think it would make the book a tad more helpful in color.

The author does touch on the food that is "growable" vertically, such as mini melons, pumpkins, squash... he lists some growing facts like planting season, typical days to maturity, zones best grown in and the general length or height to expect. That's helpful, so you can plan for specific spacing and avoid over crowding. The book also goes into espalier growing, which is also vertical, but they're trees, again, that's not the area I was looking for ideas on.

I don't know. I can't say the book wasn't helpful at all, but it wasn't as helpful as I expected either. I'm keeping it and utilize what I can out of it.

204 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

peter walker

This an excellent work which covers all the necessary basics on vertical ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 20, 2015

Verified Purchase

This an excellent work which covers all the necessary basics on vertical gardening even though it is biased toward American readers .However , for those in British climates , it is still a very usable book and simple to understand . I would recommend it to all interested in the art of vertical gardening .

J. Ottosen

Excellent read

Reviewed in Canada on January 29, 2013

Verified Purchase

I had this out of the library so long I decided to buy my own copy. We live in the city under shade trees and our soil is poor. As a result we patio garden in containers. We grow a lot of our vegetable vertical - spaghetti squash, pole beans, zucchini, cucumbers, etc. Derek's book is great at giving ideas for vertical structures we can use.

The photo section of the book is to die for. It inspired us to replace our fence with a good sturdy fence when it needed to be replaced last summer. I plan to hang baskets from it and grow plants up the fence.

All in all a very inspiring and practical book. Thank you Derek Fell.

24 people found this helpful

Carolin VandenHaak

All was as it should be

Reviewed in Canada on April 7, 2022

Verified Purchase

All was as it should be

Anthony Earl-Martin and Sophie Earl-Martin

would recommend

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 31, 2018

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great book, gave plenty of new ideas, good insights and knowledge, would recommend

ionicquest

Can't wait to get started on some of these ideas

Reviewed in Canada on December 4, 2013

Verified Purchase

Just did a quick flip through on this book and read a couple of specific chapters. I am really looking forward to trying out some of the ideas in this book come spring. Pencil and paper in hand, and off to planning my spring garden! This makes a nice companion book to the Square Foot Gardening, which I started doing over the last two years, and time to move onto new projects with growing my own food.

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