gardening on a balcony, rooftop, in a courtyard

Please tell about your experience with plants in pots in the city. How does it look in your small garden or window? What do you grow this year? What was it last year? Do you have nice books on plants in pots, helpful ones? Is your family, your lover jealous, because you spend all your time watering? Do you move the pots around for sun or shade? What about the wind on the sixth floor? Do you create small scale Oudolf meadows, fancy little Sissinghursts?

Am I the only one, who has no real garden? That would be really hard. I would like to share my 15 years experience with flowers, shrubs, trees and perennials on rooftops, balconies and in windows. At least no snails. But always too much of everything else: sun, heat, cold and wind.

I'm not quite on the sixth floor but I do have terrible soil & I live in government housing, so terrible it will stay!

We have only recently moved so my garden is still rather small. I have a few pots of geraniums, a batch of Twickle Purple lavender, some freshly planted pansies & a sweet, tiny white rose that is just gorgeous right now. There's also a new addition that I am quite coddling right now, a Tovelit hydrangea. It's still small but has 5 gorgeous dusty pink to hot pink heads.

I do fancy a little Sissinghurst actually! :) Truly, I lean more towards Beverely Nichols' style gardening. I don't know that he did much container gardening but his books do make me wish to sit/work in my garden more so I read him any chance I can.

Are there any books in particular that you can recommend? Just this morning I received an e-mail from TimberPress & noticed a book on container gardening but can't recall the name. If anyone knows it, I'd love to know what you think.

Cheers!

Now I have garden, but once upon a time I had an apartment with balcony. It was small and windy balcony, almost upon a street crossing. It was amazing what the flowerpots did. Environment was bad (I don't mean not safe, only unattractive), but with balcony pots and garden furniture made it cosy. I used self watering pots or big pots because I dont't like to water all the time (lazy ;) My house plants were out all summer like they are now i my garden. Normally house plants love to stay outside. Leaves became dark green and shiny.

I can picture that cosy balcony with housplants, enjoying the summer in fresh air with more light. My idea this year was rather on the wild side, choosing extra high plants to create some prairie illusion on the southwest side of the apartment. The next house is so close, that I can hear those neighbors speak on their kitchen balcony. I hope they don't take us for buffalos having tea behind different grasses (Karl Foerster, panicum virgatum, briza media,pennisetum, imperata,and my favourite nasella tenuissima) , gauras in white and pink, thalictrum aquilegifolium, monarda, helenium, gypsophila, centaura, campanula latiloba, Alcea Parkfrieden, achillea Sametriese, Platycodon grandiflorus, verbena bonariensis.These pots stand along the outside wall of the balcony,their feet in the shade and the heads in the sun and in the wind.The inside wall gets extremly hot, there I have mediterranean herbs and herb tea plants. Last weak we ate our first (and last) blue grapes from a vine in a pot.There is a growing family of calamintha grandiflora adding scent to everything, like different mint plants. In the background is a towering sunflower Lemonqueen, a figue tree, with 16 little figues, two palmtrees, a myrtle and pink oleander.

I love roses, there are four now, they do surprisingly well in the heat. And I love petunias with stripes, dianthus and other simple summerflowers. But they are expensive to buy every year and impossible to grow inside the apartment.

MollyGibson, please tell me more about Beverly Nichol's style. I have not found him in my garden library. - What is special about city gardening, is that you actually count the buds and heads of your plants. We do that too. I will go through my container gardening literature, and select some favourites for you.

It will be some time before we have a house, and therefore a garden. We have several of the typcal house plants in our apartment, and I'd really love to grow more. I want a herb and vegetable garden, but my husband won't let me bring any more shelves in!

I recently picked up a used copy of Herbal Remedies in Pots, but haven't had a chance to actually try any of the ideas in the book, yet.

We're on a very busy street, so I won't grow anything I might eat on the balcony. I worry too much about the pollution. Our balcony is covered with vines that cover the side of the building, though, which is very nice.

At the moment I am taking cuttings of some of the plants in my garden to take with me when I move from this coolish climate to Sydney's hot humid summers and warm/cool winters. I'll have a small balcony there - facing east - and so far am thinking of pelargonium/geraniums (which only grow in my present location with frost protection) and maybe a bit of lattice attached to a small wall-space on which I might try some star jasmine.

I shall also be researching many of the suggestions you gardeners have posted here.

I see it's been nearly two years since this thread was last active; are your balcony/patio plants thriving? How do you do it?

I live in a house with a regular garden, but my in-laws have pots on their deck. They grow lovely tomatoes - there are several varieties that do well in pots, but I don't know what is available in Australia.

Some of the mediterranean herbs would probably do well, too - rosemary and lavender, for example. Maybe oregano.

>8 tardis: tardis
Thanks for herb suggestions. I'm also thinking of parsley, chives and thyme which are the herbs I use most in cooking. Recently I saw a very odd looking pot in which herbs were thriving. The pot vaguely resembled a traditional 'strawberry pot', but it was wider rather then tall (more squat) with much larger openings for the plants so each could be watered, easily, individually. I thought this might be a good space-saving idea for a small balcony. Has anyone used these pots? Any success?

Is the herb pot plastic or clay? I have a terracotta strawberry pot that I've never had much luck with - it dries out too fast. However, your exposure is east so it might be ok.

>10 tardis: tardis
I think it was plastic. It looked almost (but not quite) like a series of bowls attached to a central something-or-other, or maybe the central part was filled with potting soil too. I'll have to make a closer inspection of it next time I'm up that way. I take your point about the traditional terracotta strawberry pots; I had one years ago, planted it with a variety of herbs but found, as you did, that it dried out too quickly and didn't really suit herbs with different water requirements.

Let's hope someone who reads this might know what I'm talking about (despite the inadequate description) and might even post a pic.

Ditto about the strawberry pot. They are charming, but the only thing I could ever grow successfully in it was portulaca.

Good luck with the herbs in pots. I have grown in containers for years, both terra cotta and plastic. Now, fighting bishop's weed, I continue with pots. Currently growing curly and Italian parsley, purple and green basil, dill, Egyptian onions, garlic chives, Swiss chard, and 3 lettuces. I think the key to success is ample sun and water as soon as they dry out. I water every day in the summer, unless it rains.

Haven't had good luck growing herbs inside.

Lavender, tarragon, sage, rosemary, burnet, oregano seem to do better in the ground for me.

I have better luck with herbs outdoors, too. I find parsley and basil are susceptible to white fly in my very sunny kitchen. Lee Valley sells a plastic system called the stack and grow Planter (XB665). I haven't used it, but it looks dandy, and I have found them to be an excellent source for gardening tools.

I must find a table or shelf to lift my plants to the sun for we have security screening on the bottom half of our balcony, then I will start a small herb garden

We have a deck with a thick wooden rail at the top, and three plastic planters that straddle the rail. Two are still overwintering in the basement with surviving rosemary, lemon balm, orange-scented thyme, plus a French lavender in a pot. I think we've lost the spearmint, lemon verbena, and stevia. The third planter was parsley and coriander, which I hope to resow. We've also got two red hibiscus in big pots which aren't dead yet. I'm hoping it will get warm enough to start moving them out soon: they need all the help they can get as the whole place is very shaded. A friend has offered chives.

I have had a basil on the windowsill for months: it looks pretty scrappy now, but I got some leaves off it for salad yesterday.