So I am Patrick Blanc, I'm a French, and I am a scientist.
I am a botanist, but working for the National Centre of Scientific Research in France.
I am mostly famous for the vertical gardens with Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron.
We had already a first project in Madrid about 10 years ago.
I did cover a whole wall with plants in Madrid, and so they were interested.
And when they did propose to have columns here for the museum, they asked me,
do you think it's possible to have the plants on columns instead of vertical gardens?
I did say yes. Of course, it's possible.
In Miami, it's a very interesting place for a botanist.
It's subtropical plants, but some are totally really tropical plants.
But because I did decide to have plants withstanding both full sunlight for outside surface,
facing the sea, so they have to face full sun, they have to face the strong winds,
sometimes salt, and also sometimes hurricane from the plants on the side,
facing the museum, because the side facing the museum is very dark.
So it's a shade-loving plant.
When people see a vertical garden, they think that in nature, in a mountain or close to a waterfall,
immediately they think about nature.
Why? Because I use many, many different species.
Usually, for instance, here in Miami, I did use 80 different species.
But in some walls, I use up to 300 or 400 different species.
And when you have so many species, of course, it looks much more natural.
The way in which I met the vertical garden is very important,
because the roots are growing on the surface, because the felt is only three millimeters thick.
So all the microorganisms associated to the roots are totally in contact with the air.
So for depollution, of course, it's important.
And also, you have benefits about insulation.
And now, the target, of course, is mostly to use water collected from the roofs,
and because we have to save maximum water, and then to recycle the excess water,
because advantage also of vertical garden compared to horizontal garden
is that with the horizontal garden, you lose a lot of water through percolation inside the soil.
And the plants don't use this water on a vertical garden.
As you have only two layers of three millimeters thick felt, or the water is flowing down,
you can collect all the excess water.
So you have only useful water when you have a vertical garden.
The interest of vertical garden is that you use vertical space, and usually it's empty space.
It's a new way to use the walls of the towns, which were empty walls.
And suddenly, they can become living walls.
So I think this is why it was a so big success, and it's since about seven, eight years.
Everybody in the world now is doing vertical gardens.
Of course, 20, 25 years ago, it was the only one.
But I'm happy because finally with this idea, I did create a new vision of the interaction
between human beings, the town, and the plants.
