Patrick Blanc

Patrick Blanc (born June 3, 1953, Paris) is a French botanist, working at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, where he specializes in plants from tropical forests. He is the modern innovator of the green wall, yet recent scholarship on the subject suggest that the vertical garden (aka. Green Wall, Botanical Brick) was invented by Professor Stanley Hart White at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1938. Professor White patented the first known Vertical Garden, or "Vegetation-Bearing Architectonic Structure and System", as a treatise on modern garden design, predating Patrick Blancs contemporary patents by nearly 50 years Although Blanc did not invent the vertical garden, he is responsible for modernizing and popularizing the garden type. Blanc describes his vertical garden as follows:

On a load-bearing wall or structure is placed a metal frame that supports a PVC plate 10 millimetres (0.39 in) thick, on which are stapled two layers of polyamide felt each 3 millimetres (0.12 in) thick. These layers mimic cliff-growing mosses and support the roots of many plants. A network of pipes controlled by valves provides a nutrient solution containing dissolved minerals needed for plant growth. The felt is soaked by capillary action with this nutrient solution, which flows down the wall by gravity. The roots of the plants take up the nutrients they need, and excess water is collected at the bottom of the wall by a gutter, before being re-injected into the network of pipes: the system works in a . Plants are chosen for their ability to grow on this type of environment and depending on available light.

This type of achievement exemplifies Blanc's ideas as a scientist and also the 15th target of the Haute Qualité Environnementale ("High Quality Environment") project, although the latter gives particular stress to use of more local species, at least outdoors.

In 2009 he was awarded an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

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