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The Secret Garden: Phyto’s garden wall

Hair-care center Phyto Universe presents New York’s first vertical garden.

Sheila Kim-Jamet -- Interior Design, 4/30/2007 10:31:00 AM

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New York is ever building upward, so why not the city’s shrubbery? Inside hair-care center Phyto Universe, the brand’s creator, Patrick Alès dreamed of doing just that with a vertical garden of tropical plants. Attempting such a project, however, would require expertise in both the fields of botany and engineering, so the company consulted with Patrick Blanc, a scientist of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and then hired engineer Laurent Corradi to work in-house and turn the concept into a reality.

Before the wall’s construction, Blanc presented a concept for the digital sequencing or mapping, which dictates what species of plants would go where, and how far apart. “They all have different textures and shades, so sequencing is like painting with plants,” explains Corradi. The wall’s engineer adds that not only is it about aesthetics, but also maintenance. “One plant might cascade down, another one might grow upward, and you have to make sure that they don’t end up killing each other,” he says.

Upon receiving Blanc’s recommendation for using felt and PVC, Corradi researched hydropony to learn what else was needed to implement the plan. In the end, he constructed a 13-foot-high double-faced wall of structural aluminum, with a layer of PVC on each side, and layers of felt to cover each face. UV tracks provide some artificial lighting on both the window- and interior-facing sides of the wall, and temperature is kept at anywhere from 50 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit to mimic a rainforest climate. An irrigation system using a nutritive solution was installed at the top to water the felt, which feeds some 9,000 tropical species—from bamboo to philodendron, plants of the Amazon, French Polynesia, and the Caribbean—that are planted directly into felt pockets as opposed to soil. Cleaning the plants and ridding them of soil was a preventive measure against parasites and insects.

It took approximately two months to conceive, construct, and plant the 2,900-square-foot garden, as well as to monitor growth and troubleshoot the issue of dying plants. After tweaking the concept, irrigation schedule, sequence, and the amount of nutrients in the solution, Corradi perfected the first vertical garden in New York.

Fittingly, the garden wall up close resembles a human scalp and its hair follicles, which brings us back to what Phyto Universe is all about. While the garden wall dominates the 6,000-square-foot hair-care center, the rest of the spaces, designed by architect Anne Gernez, are just as tasteful and serene. The architect created nine private treatment cabins, for instance, to which clients are escorted after receiving their hair and scalp analysis in a space just off the airy reception. Antique wood shutters from a 14th-century French chateau were used as screens and doors for the 81-square-foot cabins. Soft lighting and Italian ceramic-tile flooring throughout all the areas add to the spa feel. Additionally, an education space was created for training hair-care professionals in applying Phyto products, as well as a retail boutique for the Phyto-owned Caron fragrances.

For more information, visit phytouniverse.com.