GARDENA 13150-20 Natureup! Basic Vertical Set, Grey, 30.1x21.7x66.3 cm

This is lovely! The Gardena NatureUp Basic Corner set in Grey is a really useful and attractive addition to the kitchen or garden. It contains 3 pots which are just perfect for herbs in particular, which fits unobtrusively on a wall, or can be freestanding, and enables me to select fresh herbs whenever I wish. It looks great, is easy to use/clean,is durable and is made by Gardena, a company that I know and trust. It can be used in the garden,and is hardy. Very happy with this product.

This is a great must have for any gardener's (or even would be gardener) creative ambitions. I have built this holder and keep it on the wall next to my kitchen door. I have herbs growing in it and find it very handy to have fresh herbs like parsley, corriander and basil when making a meal. With separate pots, there were nine on this holder you can grow a whole variety of herbs.Equally you could plant flowers which you could normally put in a hanging basket with great results and in my opinion you would have a better display than you would get with a hanging basket. The tiers are very easy to assemble and also dissemble following the simple and well illustrated instructions and each tier is very easy to water with a long nosed watering can. It is ideal for a veranda or for use in a small backyard to create colour.I grow herbs in mine, then harvest and freeze them then plant small flowering plants to give colour through to autumn. The materials used in the manufacture of the plant holder are strong and durable and I will be purchasing more to add to this one. That's the joy of having a few tiers to begin with and extra ones you buy pin them to the wall so that the wind will not knock them over. Personally I advise pinning them to the wall so that they do not get stolen, after all they are stylish and someone might like to help themselves to them.

Designed for growing plants in tight spaces where you have no choice but to grow vertically, this set of 3 planters are designed to be stacked and fixed in the corner of an external wall such as a balcony. Relatively easy to assemble, I did find it a little trickier to identify where to mount these to the wall but managed this also in the end with the help of some video guides.There is plenty of room for plants to grow, along with drainage through small holes down from the top to the bottom, however I would recommend some base layer is added to improve water flow through the unit. Some may not like the grey colour, and I personally would have preferred a terracotta colour to match other planters but this can be overlooked and it isn't as if this isn't obvious from the photos.

(See the end for an update.)We have a small garden, but we’ve tried to grow a few salad crops, often without much success it must be said. I thought this would allow us to grow a bit more, as well as keeping the plants away from the slugs that eat anything planted directly in the borders.My first impressions weren’t that positive. I don’t particularly mind the grey colour, but the pieces took a little effort to assemble and still seemed rather flimsy afterwards. I was hoping that the weight of soil would help to hold it together, but still worried that it would easily blow over.We had a small tray of spinach that I’d started off indoors but that was in need of repotting, so I used that to test this out. After replanting, I’m still not impressed. It hasn’t shown any signs – yet at least – of instability, but it does lean over. Further, there’s not really much room for soil or crops. The most serious problem, so far at least, has been with water drainage.I gave the plants a good water after repotting but, since we’re experiencing a mini heatwave at the moment, they soon started looking dried out, so I topped them up again. Even at this stage, it’s a bit tricky to get past the plants to water the soil. Moreover, water quickly trickles down through the pots, collecting in a small reservoir in the base, which swiftly overflowed. Perhaps I should have put a bit more soil into the pots, which might have helped, but I seem to be left with thirsty plants and water running down the wall.After using it for about six weeks now, I still have mixed impressions. The spinach is generally doing ok, but that’s probably down to getting a lot of sun. It still needs watering little and often. Otherwise, either the spinach in the lower tiers ends up wilting or else the reservoir overflows. That’s a pain. Further, though we had quite a lot of rain last night, the reservoir was still no more than half full this morning. Perhaps the rain just came at the wrong angle, but it obviously didn’t go into the pots.It’s a nice idea and it does sort of do a job. I could see this being useful for growing plants on a balcony (though watch out for dripping onto whatever’s below). However, it seems like a nice idea that hasn’t been implemented as well as it might have been. If you’re looking for something low maintenance, then this isn’t it.UPDATEI wrote the above based on about 6 weeks use, where there had been no serious sign of instability, despite my initial fears. Today, about one week later, the whole tower fell off the wall where it had been sitting onto the decking below. (See penultimate photo.) This was without any bad weather or other obvious cause. For now, I’ve given up on the tower and am using the three pots separately, although only one of the stands has the reservoir in the bottom, so even this is not ideal. I’ve lowered my score from 3* to 2*.

Sorry – I have tried hard to find something good to say about this Gardena 3-tiered corner planter – but I cannot – it is a poor product and hardly deserves a single star. It is of flimsy construction and somewhat unstable, and the three planters are really small, and without an automatic multi connection irrigation system it will require regular watering with a likelihood of saturation at bottom and dry at top. On checking the Gardena website it is noted prices for accessories are exorbitant – so finally – as well as being ugly and a depressing grey colour – the Gardena system is a wickedly expensive solution for planters.