Request for advice on a balcony garden

Hi Everyone,

I'm afraid I'm very new to gardening and would love any advice anyone has to offer on planting up a balcony area. I have dogs who love to dig holes and make mockeries of any sort of bedding areas I might try to create (regrettably the garden is too small and my dogs too large to fence off any of it - I ended up with some lovely "trailing" cornflowers the one time I tried) so have never thought to do much with the garden other than turf it - I now have a new balcony following a small house extension though and would like to do something with this more protected area.

I have roughly a 2m x 2m decked area, which gets full sun from dawn to approx 13:00 then is in shade as the sun goes over the house. I have two small trees in large tubs already (a plum and a cherry - they survived the winter and this relieved/encouraged me to continue the project) as a sort of "centre piece" and I would like to expand this using rail-hanging planters/window boxes and any other type of space-saving planters (any suggestions appreciated).

I have a 5ft bamboo screen on one side which could be used to support climbers, though I would need something that would be happy in a pot. I'm aiming for a relaxation area with fragrance and colour, though with plants that are easy for someone like me to maintain.

Any suggestions would be very much appreciated and thank you for your time

Kind Regards,
Emma

 

Hi Emma and welcome! If you are willing to have things that you have to replant every year (ie annuals) then some sweet peas would live in a big pot and give you some climbing fragrance relatively soon. The supermarkets have pots of them available at the moment I believe. A quick addition is to grow night scented stock from seed (eg Lidl, Wilko). Glorious perfume and very easy. Again, if you can buy some bedding plants (supermarkets, online, some local garden centre who deliver) then ordinary 'column' stocks are also well scented and can be cut for indoors. Big pots or even grow bags would do for them. Longer term, lavender does fine in pots.

 

Thank you Caroline, I will look into sweet peas and column stock - I especially like the 'night scented' idea! Also thank you for clearing up what "annuals" means - I'm embarrassed to say I did not know this, and am very grateful for the clarification - a lot of the descriptions of plants for sale make more sense to me now.

Kind Regards,
Emma

 

Night Scented Stocks have no visual appeal ... so need to be mixed in with things that will do the "looking pretty" bit

 

Hi Kristen - thank you for your reply Based on your suggestion (and bit of uninformed Googling/ebaying that will probably be my downfall), I'm thinking perhaps a rectangular planter (60(width) X 17(breadth) X 22(height) cm) with the small end against the bamboo for climbing, with a couple of Sweet Peas at the back, then Dianthus in the middle and night scented stocks from seed at the front. Does that sound sensible to anyone?

 

They could be at the back ... you don't need to see them