Hanging garden

A hanging garden is a form of sustainable landscape architecture that can take several different forms, such as roof gardens, but will always be defined as a garden planted at a suspended or elevated position off the ground. These gardens are created with walls, fences, planted on terraces, growing from cliffs, or anything where the garden is not touching the earth. Space optimization is the main intention with the gardens, however, aesthetics and providing cleaner air are also popular reasons for setting one up. Hanging gardens are popular in urban environments where there is limited space, such as in New York or California.

History
The first instance of hanging gardens would be with the mythical Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Considered as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, This structure is likely where the terminology came from. While being one of the Seven Wonders, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon continue to be the only wonder without any physical evidence found by archaeologists to prove existence nor a possible location. Giving back to nature would become a popular practice with architects as well, with some buildings having gardens on top of the roofs as a way to give back to the ground they took from. This practice would come into form with Villa Savoye by Le Corbusier, as well as mentioned in his Five Points of Architecture.

Modern
In contemporary use, hanging gardens are a green wall on a ground level facade, a balcony, a terrace, or part of a roof garden of a home, or skyrise greenery with a residential, commercial, or government office building. During the present day, many differing types of hanging gardens can be found. Perhaps the most well known hanging garden would be the one attached to the Trump Tower, where occasionally trees will be planted in each section of the slanted side of the building. Oakland Museum, located in Oakland California, also embraces the hanging gardens and roof gardens with their Great Lawn. The lawn is welcome to all who visit, also allowing the rooftop patio of the museum to be host to concerts and events.

Vertical farms are another version of hanging gardens that have become much more common within the last decade, usually being grown indoors and stacked on top of each other to take up the least amount of horizontal space. These have some practical advantages over standard gardens as well, such as being grown with soilless systems such as hydroponics and aquaponics. These gardens also have less worry about the environment they're being grown in, as the environment can be produced and curated to whatever is needed.

Products
Prefabricated modular hanging wall garden systems have been developed and are on the market internationally. Hanging pots as well as structures like trellises can easily be bought at a local hardware store or supermarket, making setting up a personal hanging garden relatively easy and accessible.