Creating a Lush Balcony Garden: The Apartment Dwellers Guide to Gardening!

Everyone can have a garden! Even if you don’t have a yard (or any more room in your yard!)! Townhomes, apartment dwellers, condo balconies, front porches, and back decks can be green spaces too!

Container gardening, rooftop gardens, hanging baskets, tiered garden pots, and large planters can transform any sized space into a paradise!

Check out some great garden ideas to make your limited outdoor spaces into green havens!

The Apartment Dwellers Guide to Gardening!

Outdoor patios and balconies are actually a prime spot for planting! The limited space won’t hold you back when you implement planters on patios, container gardens on balconies, and hanging baskets on porches.

Both raised beds, fabric grow bags, and window boxes/railing baskets are great ideas to maximize the gardening space you’ve got. Plus, vertical gardening, plant benches, and baker racks are a great space-saving way to include more greenery with a smaller footprint! Allowing you to easily beautify your outdoor areas despite having limited space.

Not only will they supply you with beautiful flowers or delicious fruits, but these beds can also be the perfect patio privacy accent and bring shade to an otherwise exposed area!

Raised beds and planters are ideal for these limited spaces as they allow anyone to grow flowers, shrubs, dwarf trees, or simply herbs, fruit, and veggies!

Here are the key things to remember when planning a garden when you don’t have a yard!

Container Gardening Anywhere!

Gardening using just pots and planters can be done anywhere, even in your landscape beds!

• Add matching planters on your front porch to create seasonal displays all year.
• Add greenery around back decks, for shade
• Use columnar evergreens as privacy on balconies
• Line a set of stairs with climbing vines and/or a series of small pots
• Seating areas that are paved or the patch of gravel around a barbecue pit make it difficult to plant in the ground, so adding some pots or planters, raised beds, and the like to inject some greenery that doubles as screening!
• Try adding casters to galvanized tubs or large half-barrels to wheel around your shade and privacy to where you need it
• Plant scented herbs and flowers to perfume your backyard seating areas for an extra layer of enjoyment!
• Who wouldn’t want a planter by the backyard bar or pool with herbs, lemons, limes, or bite-sized fruit and veggies to use as you entertain or barbecue?

Any outdoor area can become a green space with a little ingenuity and the help of today's smaller plants for modern spaces!

Just remember to think of weight when planting on roofs and balconies, and where shed water will go when you water your plants. Downstairs neighbors may not want their balcony furniture soaked after you have watered your garden. An outdoor waterproof rug and collection trays will help direct excess moisture away to the edges of your balcony, keeping your neighbors dry.

Choosing The Right Plants For Your Spot

Choosing the right plant for your space is the first step in a successful balcony gardening experience!

• Know your Hardiness Zone when choosing any plant besides annuals, and choose plants that fall well within that range. Exposed areas like balconies and porches can experience cold and heat more drastically.
• Know how much sun your area gets - full sun, partial sun/shade or full shade
• Know if there is a lot of wind in the winter or summer that can dry out plants fast. Provide protected spots for these plants or install a windbreak.
• Map out how much room you have and plan for your plant's mature width/height
• Have a way to water if you plan on having many plants. From watering cans to lightweight hoses that attach to your kitchen faucet, you’ve got options!
• Choose pots or planters with drainage with collection trays so that draining water won’t make a mess or anger a downstairs neighbor when it inevitably overflows. Or create a drainage hose that directs shed water away from your downstairs neighbor, kind of like a mini gutter.
• Choose a good potting soil with adequate drainage (it won’t get soggy or water-logged and rot your plant's roots) yet is highly organic and can hold moisture - releasing it gradually during the long hot summer days. If you notice your plant wilting faster, it may be time to go up a container size.
• Ensure the pot is large enough to support the root system of the plants that are going in it. Plus, in especially cold climates, ensure the pots are thick enough to keep the rootball from freezing too much during the winter. You can wrap or add a layer of insulation to pots (inside the pot or external) for the winter.
• If planting shrubs or perennials, be sure to line the inside of the containers to buffer not only cold in winter but heat in summer too.
• Remember to have enough volume of soil to allow more plants, and hold moisture longer than small pots will. That means the plants will wilt down less and watering will be less frequent with these larger containers.
• Remember - Dark pots hold more heat while lighter color pots keep roots cooler. Use this to your advantage depending on your Growing Zone.
• A layer of mulch over the soil surface that is exposed will reduce moisture loss through evaporation and keep roots cool.

Understand more about caring for container plants in our #ProPlantTips For Care Garden Blog!

Space-Saving Plants For Balcony Gardening

Container gardens don’t have to be all about Coleus and Petunias!

Choosing smaller-sized, low-maintenance trees, shrubs, and perennials, dwarf forms of your larger favorites, and columnar plants that won’t take up tons of space but still have the same foliage and flowers for you to enjoy!

Even if it is just a staircase where you let vines wind up the railing or line with potted plants, there are so many pint-sized alternatives of larger counterparts.

Balcony gardening gives you plenty of space if you think 3D! Hanging plants from the ceiling or using shepherd hooks, railings support climbing vines or window boxes, walls give you vertical spaces to place plant racks or stacked pots, and of course, the floor area can be for pots on wheels or narrow raised bed planters.

Try one of these great balcony garden ideas next year:

A Sunny Informal Balcony Garden

Create a long narrow high planter box along your balcony edges, or deep narrow planters at the corners. For an easy-going and informal look on a sun balcony try this great combo:

• Use one or two Fine Line® Buckthorns as a tall and slender specimen
• Ornamental Grass for a quick fix to fill spaces, add motion, and provide light screening and shade. Dwarf Fountain Grass for a fluffy look, or an Elk Blue California Gray Rush for something a bit more formal. Use these in long rows or in intervals.
• Tuck in a Miniature Rose by your seating for the beauty and fragrance or go ‘big’ and try a Miniature Rose Tree!
• Sun-loving Perennials like Coneflowers, Lavender, Catmint, Salvia, and Tiny Monster or Rozanne Geranium for a long blooming container garden that won’t take up much space but add loads of color throughout the season.

No living roof or back deck is complete without living art and flowering décor. Space-conscious decorating is easy with such delightful ornamentals as Topiary and Tree-form Roses or an amazing Amber Jubilee Ninebark Tree-form. These handy plants are either trained as tall, narrow trees or grafted to a standard for upward, instead of outward, décor!

Add a reading chair and some candles and you have the makings for a relaxing outdoor space.

A Sunny Formal Balcony Garden

A more formal and cohesive balcony garden of evergreens creates an easy year-round display.

• The Sky Pencil Holly is a vertical shrub that makes a great ‘strategic’ screen in the back of your raised bed or outdoor seating area. One looks great in the back corner of your planter as a specimen. It will thrive in large pots too! Shear them as formal or leave them as informal as you like! Plant Creeping Jenny or Vinca as a groundcover spiller around the base.
• Use little Gem Box® Inkberry Holly as a smaller round counterpart to the Sky Pencil, filling spaces between or around the taller shrub. Also able to be pruned smaller, sheared, or left informal depending on your style.
• Keep it all evergreen and formal or add a low row of flowering Ajuga or Dianthus.
• Have some fun and include a Dwarf Alberta Spruce Spiral Topiary as a thriller or include Miniature or mid-sized Rose bushes or Rose trees!

If you have a bit more room to work with, many columnar trees rise to modest heights while keeping a trim profile. Sized just right to fit anywhere, narrow growing trees and shrubs like Sky Tower Ginkgo, Alpha Upright Canadian Hemlocks, and Taylors Juniper.

These are easy to sneak into any size available to create narrow rows of shade and privacy.

A nice set of outdoor furniture with a gel fuel firepit with some nice hanging string lights transforms a boring balcony into an evening hangout!

A Part Sun Porch or Deck Cottage Garden

Adding a Trellis or something for vines to climb on not only brings on vertical color, space-saving greenery, plus shade and privacy. Flouncy flowers, and plants that bloom in spring, summer, and fall, plus a few winter interest textures!

Wide deep pots or long raised planters, if you have the room, or tall deep planters and containers of varying heights and widths grouped together, either in matching styles or colors

• Try a Climbing Rose or Clematis for upright flowers and lacy foliage.
• Include deep Perennials that can either be carefully color-coordinated or orchestrated in a carefree rainbow of radiance. Try dwarf or small-sized Hardy Geraniums, Liatris, Dwarf Bee Balm, Astilbe, Daisies, Allium, Columbines, dwarf Coneflowers, Coreopsis, smaller Peony, and Asters.
• Try a few spring and summer flowering bulbs and annuals mixed in!

You will enjoy cut flowers and even a few daring bees and butterflies that can fly higher than the rest. Add a bistro table and sip your morning coffee or eat dinner surrounded by fragrant flowers and fresh-cut bouquets.

These gardens double as pollinator gardens, so include a bee watering station/bird bath and bird feeders and invite nature right up to your sliding door.

A Full Sun Mini-Orchard Balcony Garden

In addition to growing herbs and vegetables in your sunny raised garden for fresh produce right outside your sliding door, the amount of dwarf and columnar fruit trees and shrubs available means having a bounty out your back door too so long as your balcony isn’t too high for the pollinators to fly! (but you can be the pollinator if you are determined.)

• A dwarf or columnar fruit tree like the Improved Dwarf Meyer Lemon, or columnar Apple, can be kept pruned as small as needed. Columnar fruit trees like Blushing Delight™ & Golden Treat™ Columnar Urban® Apple Trees Combo, for instance, maintain an easy-to-reach 10 feet in height, while only sacrificing 2 feet of width each! The Sugar Pie Columnar Nectarines grow full-sized fruit on a diminutive 5’ wide plant.
• A screening and shade specimen like an Espalier Edible Grafted Apple if you have the height and width in the sun to work with, and you will need a sunny protected location with a large enough container.
• The Brightwell Blueberry or other dwarf self-pollinating Blueberry is ideal for home gardens and allows you to enjoy sweet blueberries within reach of your back door! Potted Blueberries make keeping their acidic environment easy to control too.
• Strawberries are easy fruit plants that won’t have a large space impact! There is no hassle to growing them and you get to enjoy one of the sweetest Strawberries. They act as easy care groundcover and Spillers around larger plants too!
• Plant a Shortcake Raspberry in a container on your balcony or porch as it doubles as an ornamental and fruit-bearing shrub.
• Grapes are also amazing fruiting options that will serve double duty in limited spaces. Grapes are well known for their ornate leaves and jeweled fruit and often used for more than just their fruit - adding vertical shade and privacy to your areas with a sturdy trellis or arbor.
• Mix in Herbs and Veggies to fill in the gaps or in planter boxes hanging on your railing!

Smaller sizes and narrow widths mean you don’t even need a small yard, to have the garden of your dreams! These plants are often easily grown in planters and containers on the smallest balcony or patio.

Try tiered PopUp Garden planters for multi-level herb gardens and vegetable beds!

Imagine walking out to your balcony for fresh herbs for your culinary experiments or a fresh lime for a mixed drink while at the barbecue!

Full Shade Balcony Gardens

It may seem like a double whammy to have a small space for container gardening and have to contend with the lack of any sun! Luckily for you, there are a ton of great shrubs and perennials that won’t mind!

• A shade-loving Climbing Hydrangea is a much loved vertical perennial that will blossom ivory white fragrant flowers. These add shade and privacy where you need it most.
• Flowering Groundcovers such as Periwinkle act as living mulch and container spillers
• Foliage Perennials such as Solomon’s Seal, Japanese Forest Grass, Hosta, Ferns, colorful Coral Bells, and Ajuga handle shade beautifully.
• Flowering Shade Perennials Astilbe, Lungwort, Lamium, Bergenia, and Bleeding Heart bring flowers and color throughout the growing season.
• For some greenery year-round, you can keep a Yewtopia Plum Yew Shrub trimmed small for a larger specimen.

Add some string lights, a lounge chair with some mosquito netting, a yoga mat and candles, and a water feature or fountain for a relaxing place to find some Zen.

Bringing Your Indoors Out

If you have some sun, filtered sun, or afternoon shade, then you can enjoy making your deck, patio, or balcony an extension of your interior spaces or sunroom.

• Succulents are the rockstars of low-maintenance plants! They’ll thrive in any vertical experiment you have in your mind! Hang your garden on the wall with an Instant Wall Planter.
• You can never go wrong with growing Houseplants in your filtered sun outdoor spaces! Use these favorites for any indoor project you have in mind that will fill up limited space. They even work well for hanging outdoors and as container fillers that can go indoors once the weather turns cooler.
• Hang a few Kokedama in the corners or over a bistro table for some pretty space-saving greenery.
• Use tropical and exotic plants as houseplants and patio plants whether you can bring them indoors for the winter or not such as Tropical Hibiscus, Banana plants, Canna, Elephant Ears, and Shell Ginger for seasonal accents during the growing season!
• Use Climbing Vines like Pothos and Philodendrons, Wax plants, Jasmine, or Bougainvillea as vertical screening and shade.

If you have the room indoors and the light, you can bring these plants indoors to winter over until next year.

Think of it as your own private greenhouse and set up a small potting bench, a porch swing, and some solar lights to enliven the space.

Big Gardens For Small Spaces!

A porch, patio, or even a balcony can become a slice of paradise with some of the newer (and smaller) varieties available to gardeners these days! 

Garden anywhere with small-scale techniques, vertical gardening, and modern plants - and the help of Nature Hills Nursery!

Happy Planting!