Replay's storefront on Passeig de Gràcia in Barcelona now hosts a vertical garden thanks to Swedish landscape architect Michael Hellgren of Vertical Garden, in collaboration with interior architect Roberto Baccioni of Studio 10.

Hellgren, who founded the Vertical Garden design studio in 2004, develops leafy living installations for indoor as well as outdoor locations and creates unique designs for almost any climate and location.

Replay's new two storey green wall covers around 100 square metres and creates a dramatic and playful environment using waterfalls, sculptures and contrasting materials.

The waterfalls were actually the natural starting point for the plant design, where growing conditions change with linear patterns of fissures and cracks in the underlying exposed rock, or the rapidly decreasing moisture already small steps away from the immediate vicinity of the falling water. 

In such a manner, like the erratic and geometric cracking of an eroding rock, groups and strings of plants were laid out in an organic pattern.

This generous surface allowed for many kinds of plants. Larger groups of begonias, different ferns, small (but long) aroids like the common Philodendron scandens or Scindapsus pictus, sets the background for more dramatic effects of cascading fronds of Nephrolepis exaltata and Polypodium subauriculatum or larger aroids like Philodendron giganteum and P. erubescens.

Hellgren also created an outdoor vertical garden for Repaly, located in a patio in the back of the store.

Partially shadowed by surrounding buildings, the southwest facing wall has the upper area well exposed to the hot Mediterranean sun, whereas the lower part is mostly in shadow.

This difference in sun exposure gave way for more typical Mediterranean plants on top – such as Lavandula, Rosmarinus and Artemisia – and more shadow preferring plants like Chlorophytum and Fatsia in the lower area.

Currently, between these two are plants that will grow larger in time; the idea being to create a strong and wild growing surface to contrast with the metal grid from which it extends.

Images Vertical Garden.