The garden of the future is… inside your house. Urbanisation, the threat of climate change and soaring house prices have led artists, ecologists and architects to experiment widely with creating vertical indoor gardens. Environmental credentials aside, they look rather amazing.

Greenmeme is the ongoing collaborative project of Freya Bardell with Brian Howe focussed on sustainability and ecology. In Live With Skin (above) various spiky, tumbling and protruding green pants emerge from a modular framework as if bursting through the steel surface.

Maruja Fuentes explores a similar theme with her ‘Green Pockets,’ a series of smooth, white tiles attached to an indoor wall that appear to have organically sprouted like seed pods.

These are art pieces exploring the intersection between ecology and technology. For a more practical take look to Australian company Fytowall whose various products are a response to the problem of creating sustainable ecological systems in urban environments. I especially like the Fytowall herb garden, designed to rejuvenate the kitchen garden in Australia’s cities, which have declined due to lack of space and freqent drought.

How does it work, you may well ask. Fytowall (above) is an aminoplast resin foam – a fancy scientific alternative to soil. Plants are grown in this material and then inserted into a framework before installation, when they are hooked up to a drip-feed irrigation system. Voila! Most ground-cover and house plants will thrive in it, and the company provides already-grown plants and a detailed guide for maintenance.

Similar work is done by UK company Biotecture using their product BioWall. Above is the rendering and completed project they undertook at Anthroplogie in Regent Street, a textured tapestry of multicoloured foliage for which they used 11,000 species including the ribbon-leaved house-plant favourite Chlorophytum (spider plant) and the elegant, sculptural peace lily.

Biotecture provides a statement relating to the environmental benefits of living walls in urban contexts, such as air purification, noise insulation, sustainability (many use rain water irrigation systems) and psychological well-being. Indeed research presented at TED 2009 carried out in New Dehli, a city with poor air quality, revealed that the air purification qualities of house plants are quantifiable, and they recommend ‘growing your own fresh air’ using Areca Palm, the wonderfully-named Mother-in-law’s Tongue (Sansevieria), and various types of money plant. My favourite vertical wall plant? The sweet little button fern Pellaea rotundifiolia. But anything long-leafed and glossy looks great.

As botanist and vertical garden pioneer Patrick Blanc states, wall gardens don’t have to be a criticism of the city, a way of closing it off and shutting it out. They can bring plant life and urban landscape together: the juxtaposition is often what makes these plant walls so striking. Utilising the natural propensity of plants to spread out their roots over surfaces as well as down into soil, Blanc has been designing luscious, tropical walls for Parisian apartments and the overflowing, colourful walls bursting with life look even more vibrant against a minimalist architectural and colour scheme (see below).

So what should those of us who can’t afford to commission Patrick Blanc do to increase the ecological credentials (and air quality) in our houses and flats? There are some great innovative products on the market. My absolute favourite is the Woolly Pocket, a breathable planter made out of recycled plastic that comes in all kinds of shapes and sizes to suit your space. Fed by a drip irrigation system, it’s ideal for a kitchen wall garden – planted up with fragrant thyme and rosemary.

So far I haven’t come across many suppliers doing this kind of self-assembly, practical product in the UK. If I’m missing something please let me know!