Build a Beautiful Balcony Garden

Building a beautiful balcony garden may seem impossible. Especially on an apartment balcony where you may have only a small balcony garden. A quick look at the Field Guide to Urban Gardening by Kevin Espiritu of Epic Gardening is, without a doubt a beneficial way to discover your secret garden.

Besides the blessings of fragrant plants and flowers, there are lots of advantages to balcony gardening, which are frequently overlooked. Kevin explains that after he developed his personal space, he in no way looked at balconies in the same way. All he sees is the balcony’s potential. Field Guide to Urban Gardening presents loads of recommendations for developing small spaces.

By remodeling your balcony into a garden, you’re beautifying an area that’s usually quite drab and may be underused.

Some of the advantages include:

• Reduce noise by developing a live plant wall
• Get rid of pests by growing mosquito repellent plants to block them from your home.
• Create a new space for meals or relaxation.
• Green areas are proven to reduce stress
• Plants can clean up pollutants from outside air.

Plan Your Balcony Garden First!

Plan your balcony garden before you start. Why? You’d be surprised at the added weight of soil and water.  A gallon of water weighs 7 lbs.  Spread out your planters to disburse the weight, especially if you have a hanging balcony. Instead, you can use galvanized mesh for screening between two planters, so vines can fill in between two planters.

Or create sit-on planters for your balcony garden. Fill them up with herbs to harvest for a BBQ later. You might even add a water feature to attract beneficial birds to your balcony.

Herbs Add Fragrance and Flavor to Your Balcony Garden

In Complete Container Herb Gardening, herbal guru and certified horticulturist Sue Goetz takes you through the ins and outs of growing fragrant and flavorful herbs in containers. You can harvest your seasonings right on your balcony patio! The fragrance of some of the herbs can be used to hang on your patio or in your closets depending on the herbs you choose.

Sue includes step-by-step guides for planting the herbs as well as follow-along photos. This is a great book if you want to transform your apartment balcony garden.

Create A Work of Art

To make a floral arrangement on your balcony, Floratopia by Jan Johnsen suggests that you stagger the height of the pots. By raising the pots, you make the plants more noticeable to inject color and grace. If the railing is sturdy enough, you can place pots along the rail but make sure they are secured and won’t fall off by accident or in a storm. Pedestals make a good resting place for pots as they show off the flowers. She also suggests using a technique called color echoing which repeats the color of one plant throughout the gardening area. This color echo carries the eye around the entire garden area. It’s a technique suitable for all types of gardens.

Grow Bag Balcony Garden

Grow bags are great for flowers, grass, or vegetables. They come in all different styles and sizes. They allow a plant’s roots to “breathe” and prevent too much water from staying in the pot. Grow bags are inexpensive alternatives to pots. They’re perfect for a balcony because they don’t add extra weight like clay or ceramic pots do. This makes them easier to move around. You can change your garden as much as you’d like.

If you decide to create a balcony garden, please share a photo of it on my page at Facebook.com. https://www.facebook.com/suzkaymartco/ I love to see other peoples’ creative ideas! Thank you for reading my blog. NOTE: The links under the pictures are Amazon links to the products shown. If you click on the link to purchase the item, Amazon will pay me a small advertising fee for having the product on my blog. This supports my efforts to research the best gardening information for you.