Making it a green day on a balcony or deck
Patrick Langston and Ailsa Francis explore balconies, decks and rooftop terraces.
Backyard gardens to die for are great if you have a backyard. If you’re a condo or apartment dweller, or even an urban homeowner with more deck than back forty, it’s a different story. Your outdoor space is limited. It could face north. And you may not be inclined to log countless hours maintaining your greenery. But there’s no reason you can’t still indulge your green thumb.
Leslie Fulton’s second-floor deck in the Glebe is a riot of colour and food, thanks to beautifully orchestrated annuals, trees, vines, perennials, herbs and vegetables in glazed, terracotta and fibreglass pots. She favours lavender and catmint because they are lovely and they attract bees and butterflies.
Her deck faces south, so she haunts nurseries in town and out for colours that don’t wash out in the sun (she says this summer’s display is “Bollywood-inspired”).
“I just buy what I love and then put everything together,” says Fulton, a freelance writer.
Fulton staggers her planting so as not to overwhelm herself with work. For the same reason, she uses an automatic watering system from Lee Valley Tools.
At the end of the summer, some plants get shunted indoors while others go into her ground-level garden or up to the cottage.
Retired garden designer and horticulturalist Patti Allen also has a second-floor balcony where she grows mainly herbs and vegetables with a scattering of ornamentals. The balcony faces north, so she moves the containers around during the day to meet their light requirements.
Allen, who has a prized collection of vintage watering cans, fertilizes the plants at every watering with low-dose fish fertilizer.
Wakefield landscape architect Stephen W. Armstrong does most of his work at ground level, but he has taken on rooftop projects.
“It’s undeveloped space, as far as I’m concerned,” he says, and that means a chance to create a unique living area like the one he made for a Rockcliffe condo owner. With a few elegant Japanese lilacs in large planters, dashes of other greenery and clean lines in its construction, the 700-square-foot space is simple and restful.
He urges prudence when adding a lot of greenery to a rooftop, balcony or other structure.
“If you have plants, then there’s soil, and when you add water there’s a lot of weight. Be careful about building big planters and then adding heavy soil,” he says. A few herbs and begonias are no threat to structural integrity, but if you’re considering anything extensive, check with an architect or engineer.
When planning your ultra-urban greenery, ask your local nursery about lightweight soil mixtures and drought-tolerant plants, Armstrong suggests.
If you have plants, then there’s soil, and when you add water there’s a lot of weight. Be careful about building big planters.
And do monitor moisture levels. “If plants are going to bake, they’ll do it on a rooftop,” he says.
Not all condo dwellers have a top-of-the-world sanctuary. Angela Marcus lives in an attractive east-end unit with a couple of standard-issue balconies, although her outdoor space does face an expansive treed area nearby.
On one balcony, she has some herbs and a begonia. On the other, she’s set out a few planters with perennial coral bells and an arrangement of small branches and dried eucalyptus shoots (she replaces the shoots with evergreens in the winter). Marcus says the minimalist approach not only saves her from lugging bags of top soil up to her unit, it also suits the surroundings.
“This is an urban area. There are buses down there, and noise. So how do you (have some greenery) without trying to re-create Eden?”
When fall comes, she plans to recycle her perennial coral bells in the gentlest way possible: “I’m going to give them to friends who have houses and lots of space.”
Vera Djelic also has taken a minimalist approach to outdoor space since downsizing to a condo. She owns a downtown, 27th-floor penthouse with a generous terrace and a sweeping view that, on a clear day, can extend to Britannia Bay.
Djelic’s backyard in the sky includes ferns and grasses, a Mother’s Day gift of tomato and pepper plants, and the recent addition of a small water feature.
For colour, she picked up hanging baskets of splashy flowers at Costco and popped them into planters, to which she added a bit of gravel to weight them against the wind. “It took me an hour to plant everything,” she says. “I wanted a backyard feel but not too much work.”