Why stop at parks when we could make cities lusher and greener by integrating thousands of plants right into the facades of urban buildings? Vertical greenery improves air quality, shades the buildings, adds privacy and creates habitats for native birds and insects. These 13 examples include a parking garage, private residences, retail spaces and the world’s tallest vertical garden.

Vo Trong Nghia House Renovation

Created as an example of how greenery can be incorporated back into urban Vietnam, this house renovation incorporates a galvanized steel screen that acts as a trellis for climbing plants, enhancing privacy and security while also filtering air and sunlight.

Stacking Green by Vo Trong Nghia

Another approach by the same architecture firm, Vo Trong Nghia, uses 12 layers of concrete planters to create a vertical garden around a tall and narrow home that’s 65 feet deep but only 13 feet wide. Staggered spaces between the layers offer room for different heights of plants.

Bosco Verticale: Twin Green Towers

Nearly 1,000 trees, 5,000 shrubs and over 10,000 other small plants have been added to the city of Milan in these two urban towers alone. The twin towers of the Bosco Verticale by Stefano Boeri were designed to meet all of the needs of a heavy load of plants, including irrigation, root systems and weight. The greenery brightens up the city, provides shade and cleaner air for residents, and offers habitats for regional birds and insects.

Biological Concrete Absorbs Water & Grows Moss

Building materials could be made with the growth of greenery in mind, making a layer of moss or ivy on the exterior a natural part of the structure rather than a potential problem. Scientists at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya in Barcelona are developing a ‘biological concrete‘ that captures rainwater to create living walls of moss and fungi.

Green Cast by Kengo Kuma

Kengo Kuma and Associates created a patchwork aluminum facade with spaces for plants to grow for a pharmacy and clinic in Japan. Ventilation shafts and rainwater downpipes are concealed within the panels to keep the plants healthy.

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Forested Facades 13 Buildings Bringing Greenery To The City

Currently a concrete wasteland along most of its urban length, the Los Angeles River is set to get a dramatic billion-dollar makeover with the backing of the Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps has revealed support for the most comprehensive plan, which transforms two segments of the river stretching 11 miles in length into green space for humans and natural habitats for wildlife.

Curbed LA has interactive sliding before-and-after images of various parts of the river, showing what they look like now and how much they’ll change after the rehabilitation. Among the planned changes are restoring wetlands that have been lost to urban expansion.

The LA River acted as a flood control channel until January 1st of this year, getting a new use as a navigable waterway, meaning the county has to make it accessible to the public. New public events along the river have already begun, like bike-in movie nights.

Aside from the obvious positives for residents of Los Angeles, the $1 billion transformation is expected to bring in over $5 million over the next 10 to 15 years alone, and generate tens of thousands of jobs.

It flows down the streets, up staircases and around corners – a green carpet, unfurled like a leaf, in a city of stone. This path of grass was installed in the picturesque French village of Jaujac to celebrate the 10th year of its arts and nature trail programs. Public artists Gaëlle Villedary used an incredible 3.5 tons of natural, living turf grass.

Stretching nearly 1,400 feet, the trail brings greenery to places that have little room for nature. Though the village is set in a breathtaking natural setting of forests, hills and rivers, its public areas are fairly bare.

The artists explain, “Through the village to link natural areas on either side, a link, a path … a path connecting the heart of the village and its inhabitants with the valley. The incarnation of the wire through the ages to Jaujac is a piece of nature, a communion between Nature and Man, through Art.”

Calling to mind moss graffiti, the green carpet represents a stunning convergence of natural and urban environments. The temporary installation was completed in September 2011.