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Additional Resources
The Fashion Valley Mall is located at 7007 Friars Road, San Diego, CA 92108, 619.298-0381; visit their website. See the 3:49 time lapse video of the Fashion Valley Mall construction by Theodore and Jim Mumford on YouTube here. Read the August 31, 2012 blog post The Finished Product: VGM living wall at Fashion Valley Mall from Tournesol Siteworks; the June 26, 2012 ?Living Wall? Is Part of Fashion Valley Makeover Plans installed by GreenScaped Buildings Advertiser Press Release by Greenscaped Buildings on Greenroofs.com; and the June 20, 2012 Upcoming VGM Living Wall at San Diego?s Fashion Valley Mall blog post from Tournesol Siteworks where you can see many planting photos from Mission Landscape Architecure. The Fashion Valley Mall Living Wall was nominated for the 2012 San Diego Architectural Foundation’s Orchids & Onions Award – see and vote for it here.
Learn about the following company in The Greenroof Directory: Tournesol Siteworks.
Fashion Valley Mall is an upscale, open-air shopping mall in Mission Valley in San Diego, California, the county’s largest regional mall. The 800 sf living wall is located in a plaza and meeting place at the main entrance to the mall. The living wall is the newest component of a $15 million renovation nearing completion at the Mission Valley venue.
Located across from The Cheesecake Factory and to the right of True Foods, you can see the wall up close and appreciate each plant which grew for four months in a controlled area before moving to Fashion Valley Mall. The project utilized 4,000 plants with the VGM? Modular Living wall planting system by Tournesol Siteworks, completed by GreenScaped Buildings. Plants include ornamentals, ferns, grasses and eight different types of ground coverings.
Under the watchful eye of Contractor Jim Mumford and Project Manager Kevin Norton, GreenScaped Buildings worked with Designers Rocco Campanozzi and Jerri Pick at Mission Landscape Architects.
Referring to construction day in early August, 2012, Jim Mumford of GreenScaped Buildings said, “One of the unforeseen challenges is that we are restricting our work to the early morning hours due to the proximity of the living wall to the True Foods Restaurant. Always sensitive to our clients and their need to maintain their business, we are limiting our hours so the noise and construction won?t impact shoppers and diners.”
The Tournesol VGM? system is a recycled plastic soil-based planting module attached to stainless steel hanging rails. Using triangulated drip irrigation, the wall is 18′ tall and 51′ wide and utilizes 250 Tournesol Siteworks modules. The drip irrigation system uses gravity to flow water throughout the modules.
Meant to resemble the keys on a piano, plants used include spider plants, lemon button ferns, ribbon ferns, Ajuga, moneywort and mondo grass, among others. The wall took 5 days to install; it would have taken only 4 days to complete, but they had problems with the pre-constructed wall. See the time lapse video below.
