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Millennials might be “killing” napkins, chain restaurants, and golf. But one thing the generation that just came of age loves to do is garden. The millennial green thumb is having a huge impact on urban home design, with more renters than ever filling their living spaces with potted plants and mini-plots of carefully tilled soil.
One of the hottest trends in home gardening is the idea of a living wall—a wall virtually covered in foliage. The benefits of dedicating a large portion of your wall space to plants are numerous, but there are certain things to consider before jumping in with both trowels. Here’s three things to know before you build a living wall.
1. Living walls help you save energy
This is a blog about saving energy, so we would be remiss if we failed to explain how a wall of plants, well, saves you energy! According to the folks at Ambius, “Unlike brick or concrete, plant surfaces don’t store up solar energy, but reflect it. Both interior and exterior walls help to actively cool the air in summer by a process called evapotranspiration, reducing the need to cool the building. (A living wall) will insulate the building and reduce energy costs for heating the building in winter as well.”
2. Know your limitations
Some plants require more management than others. A croton, for example, requires half a dozen hours of sunlight and near constant watering in order to survive. If you know your lifestyle or gardening skills won’t be commensurate with the amount of time it takes to keep a finicky plant alive, plan realistically. There’s nothing wrong with a living wall of succulents.
3. Know your price range
Like many energy saving measures, living walls are an investment. Know how much you are willing to pay up front—according to Housetrends, living walls run around $90-130 per square foot for installation and irrigation. And know how long you plan to live in your dwelling so you can make the investment worth it. If you can swing it, now might be the perfect time to make your walls come alive.
Our friends at Green Builder Media 
The second big strength of The Flex House is implied by its name. Single? You can create hundreds of square feet of recreation/office space. Looking to raise kids in your Flex House? Any number of floor plans can help you optimize your family’s sanctuary. You can have upstairs space or you can keep things on one story. You can add expansion modules or keep the floor plan basic. Remarkably, a home that can be “100 percent energy self-sufficient” per Green Builder is also virtually as adaptable as any you’re likely to find.
Here’s where this all starts to get ridiculous. The sizable, adaptable Flex House is not some sort of boutique home design. Amazingly, the base model will cost between $85,000 and $100,000, about the median home price in 
First, let’s take a closer look at what passive home design really involves. The core of a passive home design is solar energy. In the case of structures that are built from the ground up, the design of the structure is inherently and intentionally planned to reduce the heating and cooling loads that the building must carry, and then meet those needs either in whole or in part with energy derived from solar panels. Homes can also often be remodeled to take advantage of passive energy benefits, starting with a 
Essentially, passive home design works because the home or building collects heat as the sun shines through the south-facing windows and retains it in building materials that store heat, known to designers as thermal mass. The materials that serve as a passive home’s thermal mass often include common building materials such as concrete, brick, stone, and tile, but can also include more unusual materials such as water. This heat is then distributed to different areas via different methods, including conduction, convection, and radiation.
It’s important to understand the fundamental principles behind passive home design before embarking on a project. 
Another interesting passive home project is nestled in the San Juan Mountains in southeastern Colorado, where the so-called 
Passive energy buildings offer their occupants tremendous short-term and long-term benefits, not only in cost but also in comfort. Passive homes in general cost five to 10 percent more to build than traditional homes, but the long-term savings in energy costs more than offsets that investment. It’s worth keeping in mind that federal, state, or community tax credits or other tangible benefits may apply to your passive home project.