COEUR d'ALENE — Walking into Kari Glessner's greenhouses, guests will see countless hanging baskets that dangle like botanical chandeliers above endless rows of colorful blossoms and fragrant blooms.

They'll also see curious creations, like cement busts with grasses and succulent plants for "hair."

And if visitors tilt their heads up just a bit, they'll see more curiosities: Glessner's gravity-defying displays of "vertical gardens," which are suspended in the air or hang on planks of old barn wood.

"The wheels are always turning in my head of how I can be different," Glessner said Tuesday morning.

Vertical gardens, sometimes called "living walls," are planters that have been flipped on their sides so plants grow out rather than up. They can be placed in wood frames, where they give the illusion of extremely realistic 3D paintings. The gardens can also be grown in hanging spheres or cylinders, such as the ones Glessner fashions from chicken wire. Those she started in November are loaded with thick plants that are bright green and purple.

Glessner explained squat and short-rooted succulent plants, including donkey's tail and hen and chicks, do quite well in the vertical planters. For the cylinder and sphere planters, she shapes the chicken wire and layers it with the plants and moss and places soil in the center. For those that hang on the wall, she uses specially-made square or rectangular boxes and fills the larger ones with a spongy, mossy substance for watering purposes.

"Gravity pulls the water down, and so since these are much taller than the half ones, I need to have a little bit of moisture, and this foamy medium allows the moisture to disperse even high," she said, touching the top of a large rectangular planter. "Even with gravity wanting to pull it down, it still stays moist up here."

Vertical gardens have risen in popularity in recent years and have even grabbed the attention of do-it-yourself guru Martha Stewart. Glessner, who owns The Greenhouse in Coeur d'Alene, first discovered vertical gardening at a grower show in the Midwest and was amazed by a wall display she saw in New York.

"It was probably 50 feet tall by 100 feet long, and it was all one big mass of vertical growing," she said. "It not only had succulents; it had grasses, it had ferns, it had everything. Someday, I’m going to get to that stage, but I’m going to start slowly with succulents."

Vertical gardening offers a unique approach to maintaining and displaying plants. Glessner said one huge advantage of using the drought-tolerant plants is how low maintenance they are. She said most of them can go a week or more without being watered.

"That’s the beauty of it," she said. "You can leave and go on a summer vacation for a week and come home to some greenery, some beauty."

Vertical gardens are great in confined spaces, Glessner said. They don't require table or counter space and can hang on practically anything.

"If you’re in a condo or an apartment and you don't have any space for living plants, this is a super great option," she said.

She said vertical gardens are also used in smoggy and densely populated areas, such as cities in China, to help clean the air.

"They want to show people that plants make a difference," she said. "You walk by it and it’s almost like you’re already breathing in good oxygen."

Glessner continues to experiment with combinations of succulents and would like to expand on the creativity opportunities this growing method offers. She said she is "still on the learning curve of getting it all figured out."

"I’m in the process of figuring out how I can easily change this medium to a medium that is going to stay even moister longer for actual bloomers and for veggies without having to get big massive boxes," she said.

Info: www.thegreenhousecda.com