Perth Voice Interactive

IT’S meant to be a living wall but Perth council’s horizontal garden at the Northbridge Piazza looks more like the living dead.

Formerly known as the “green wall” it’s been redubbed a “screening wall” in all recent council documentation, maybe because the predominant colours are now various shades of brown.

Installed in 2009, many plants have died and been replaced a couple of times over, and a few years after installation it was in dire straits with the westerly-facing wall exposed to extreme summer heat.

The shrubs near the ground were vandalised and given Perth’s approaching Mad Max-like water shortages Water Corp will only let the sprinklers on twice a week.

Running out of options, Perth councillors have approved a $60,000 ”modular vertical garden system”, a water-wise screen of droopy native plants to create a curtain of greenery.

Cr Jim Adamos was the only councillor to vote against the system, saying he wasn’t willing to spend more money when the walls have had limited success.

Council staff say a vertical garden provides valuable research in an “industry technology in its infancy”.

by DAVID BELL