Interview: Gardens in the sky

Patrick Blanc was born in Paris in 1953 and made his first trip to the tropical rainforests of Malaysia and Thailand at 19. In 1988 he patented the technique for growing vertical gardens that he had started developing as a child, and a year later he took a doctorate in botanical sciences in Paris, writing his thesis on the plants of the tropical rainforest floor. In 1994 he introduced his vertical gardens to the International Festival of Gardens at Chaumont-sur-Loire. After that commissions started to pour in. He is a scientist at the French national research agency (CNRS) in…