Urban LivePicture is an exciting and innovative new product, which is designed to bring the garden into your home and hang on your wall all year round as a form of living art.
The format is ingeniously simple and inspired by the hugely fashionable Living Walls that can be seen in hotels and offices in confined spaces.
Carefully selected plants are placed in specially developed individual growing pockets within a vertical cassette format. The Urban LivePicture is then assembled into a smart decorative frame and attached to the wall like a painting. As the plants grow and develop, the garden canvas becomes alive - a type of conversation piece - providing immediate interest and vibrancy to any interior.
Urban LivePicture makes its UK debut at Grand Designs London Live 2017, the multi-award winning home inspirations event at London’s ExCel from April 29 to May 7, 2017. It is being launched by UK company Urban Roof Gardens, which has exclusive rights to sell Urban LivePicture direct to consumers in the UK (Stand: GF10).
Pierre Wilter, Design Director of Urban Roof Gardens, said: “Urban LivePicture is far more chic than your average pot plant. It provides an inspirational, but simple method of bringing the outside inside in a very dramatic and effective way and is perfect for city dwellers with no outdoor space. And being vertical takes up zero floor or shelf space.”
Urban LivePicture has been designed to work in any room − living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom. It even works outside – all that is required is a wall or vertical surface. As with all indoor plants the area chosen does, however, need to offer light, warmth and humidity.
What makes Urban LivePicture even more appealing is that it is so easy to maintain. With its own smart, integrated watering system Urban LivePicture doesn’t require electricity or a separate water source. A clever reservoir hidden within the picture frame provides water for at least six weeks and a clever alert system indicates when the water needs topping up. Fertilizer beads can also be introduced into the reservoir if required.
There are four different planting schemes available to choose from. The schemes comprise perennials, which not only grow well together but have also been specially selected to offer variety and interest in terms of texture, colour and leaf formation. A special aromatic “Herb Edition” has also been created for Grand Designs Live comprising a selection of herbs and designed to hang on a wall in the kitchen, affording keen chefs the freshest source herbs for their dishes.
In addition there are currently five different sizes, and frames come in a choice of colours to match any interior decor. Prices start from £499 upwards, which includes a planting scheme of choice.
Installation is straightforward – just like hanging a picture - and Urban LivePicture is supplied with the necessary hanging brackets, wall plugs and screws to fix to most surfaces in the home. The only factors to be considered (aside from whether the location provides enough light, warmth and humidity for the plants to thrive) are if the wall can support the weight and there are no buried cables or pipes hidden behind the chosen spot.
Once the plants are fully-grown and happy in their location (this will take from a few weeks to a few months), Urban LivePicture is surprisingly easy to maintain and any unhappy plants can easily be replaced. Customers will also have the ability to buy a new planting scheme when the season changes or when they just want a different look. Urban LivePicture requires much less maintenance than pot plants.
Urban LivePicture was invented and designed in Holland in 2016 and has already proved extremely popular in commercial spaces – hotels, restaurants, offices. This is the first time, however, it is available to be purchased by private individuals in the UK.
