Green wall to grow from new parking garage

The south wall of the city's new Lumberworks parking garage is grim and barren, a concrete outline of the three stories of parking bordered by a jumble of power transformers and switching devices.

But by the end of the decade, much of that wall should be a tapestry ofvines and plants, a literal "green wall."

The city is installing a green wall that will provide environmental as well as aesthetic benefits for the garage that sits between O and N streets near the viaduct in the West Haymarket.

The green wall, like a green roof, is designed to slow and cool rainwater as it heads for nearby streams, said Dennis Scheer, a landscape architect with Clark Enersen Partners.

And that is a good thing for the health of streams and rivers,particularly in urban areas where concrete has replaced the bare earth that helped slow down and cleanse rainwater in the past, he said.

The plants also help filter pollutants out of the air. That is particularly helpful with a garage, where the photosynthesis of the plant material will help remove the carbon from exhaust fumes, and release oxygen, Scheer said.

A green wall will also help to cool the building itself, protecting it from the suns heat, said Wayne Mixdorf, parking manager for the city.

Research has shown that these theoretical assumptions are true and that green walls have environmental advantages, Scheer said.

Green walls aresometimes calledbiowalls,ecowalls, vertical gardens or living walls. However green walls and living walls are actually two distinct kinds of walls, Scheer said.

Living walls generally are interior walls covered with living plants and used in conjunction with the heating and cooling systems of buildings to purify, or better filter, the air.

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Green wall to grow from new parking garage