A Hanging Garden Part 2

So it's been a week or two now since I got my hanging garden finished.  Check it out here. So now it's time to hang it and enjoy the beauty of it all.  It ended up to be a bit heavier than I had anticipated so we had to hang it differently than we had originally planned.  Instead of just using hooks, we had to come up with something different to disperse the weight more evenly.

It is imperative that if you are going to hang something this heavy on your wall, you must screw it into the studs or it will rip the sheet rock and siding and anything else right off.  To find the studs on the exterior of the house, we had to pull back our siding, and drill with a tiny little drill bit until we hit the first stud.  Once we hit that, we measured 16" in each direction (that's typically how far apart studs should be placed-according to the building codes) and drilled 2x4 treated wood pieces into those studs. 

We then drilled in treated wood on the back of my garden.  The idea is so that the two boards would rest on each other and help with weight distribution.  It's called a french cleat and essentially this is what it looks like only one of the boards is drilled on the wall, and the other on the garden.  Then the two bards are drilled together so they don't slide back and forth.  If you are super confused by now...I found the tutorial on a Home Depot website.  Follow this link. http://community.homedepot.com/t5/Weekend-Projects/Vertical-Garden-Build/td-p/42309?cm_mmc=hd_email-_-GC_M_CONS_HD28_HTHD_L02_NOOFR-_-20120501_GCnoOFF-_-video_verticalgarden&et_rid=47146624

And after that is all done, there you have it.  Now the beautiful thing is it only needs watering one really good time about every other week.  Perfect for those who are diligent at watering.