This is a project that has taken quite a few iterations to get where I want it to be.

I had some plants that love humidity, so I started keeping them in and around our shower, where they stayed happy. Of course, the shower got a bit busy with the shelves and pots. I was visiting an orchid greenhouse one day and saw they used chicken-wire and hooks around their pots, so my first plan was to copy that.

The results of the chicken-wire pot arrangement? Terrible! Just terrible. I think having the pots visible makes it look like a bunch of pots hanging from a chicken-wire mesh, rather than a living wall. So I had to adjust to make some kind of solid background.

I dont want to put any material flat against the back wall of the shower, as it will certainly encourage mold and mildew growth, so my second idea was to get a big sheet of felt and attach it to the front of the chicken-wire frame, to act as a stand-off from the back wall of the shower. This lets some air flow through, and I can peer back there to make sure it stays clean.

In the second incarnation of the plant wall, I sewed pockets into the felt, with specific plants in mind for each pocket. I think visually, the results of this are actually the best of any of my designs. However, the pockets did not allow for moving the plants around depending on light conditions or watering needs.

The other problem with this design (and my approach) was that I copied other living walls which used felt and encouraged the plants to root directly into the felt material. In these walls, they did not use plastic pots in the pockets, but rather dumped the plants directly in the pockets to let the roots go wild.

What I didn’t count on was how poor of a moisture retainer the felt would be. It sucked the moisture right out of the soil of the plants, and without near daily watering the plants would completely dry out. That wasnt a problem when we were home, as the shower gets used daily. But if we went away for a weekend we would come back to dried out plants and it would actually be quite challenging to soak the potting mixture enough with the shower head to get it to soak up water.

The people who have these felt-based living walls usually have drip irrigation that slowly flows through the felt, keeping everything moist. But I chose not to go that route to fix the issues, as the idea of trickling water through the wall and down the shower drain seemed like it would lead to staining and discoloration. and if the watering system ever stopped working when we were away, we would lose all the plants pretty quickly.

So on to the third incarnation: What I should have done all along - A felt pocket wall from Aliexpress. In all truth, they were all supposed to be black. But oh well. The benefits of the pockets here is that I have kept all the plants in their plastic pots, which means they require significantly less watering, and the felt can dry out without sucking the water from the pots. So far, everything seems happy. I also added a grow light above the wall, as in wintertime there isnt much light in the shower.

And here are a few pictures of it after a few months growing in and developing

There is a bit more growing in to do, for the leaves to fill in a bit more to cover the pockets and background. I’m still playing around with species and varieties, to find out where things like to live, and where they thrive.