Patio Garden
The great thing about having somewhere firm underfoot is that you can keep the area clean for sitting, eating, drinking, sunbathing….. Decks, balconies and patios can be just as green, colourful and scented as any other part of a garden, and there are beautiful containers of every size, shape, colour and material to be found in garden centres.
Most of our troughs, pots and baskets are given over to annuals and each year we like to think up a different colour scheme – just to make a change. I love red geraniums – reminds me of southern Europe – and they go so well with their own strong green foliage. We’ve had pinks and whites, which is fun and frothy, and a riot with blue and yellow too – the entire colour spectrum. It all looks good in nature, even if you wouldn’t choose it for painting a room.
Container gardening is all fun. Use good all-purpose peat-free compost and ensure it drains well. Set your containers up off the ground on bricks or something similar so that they don’t sit in damp, which will harbour and admit pests, and won’t rot your decking if it is wood. You will need to feed these plants during the growing season if you want them to thrive and keep flowering.
Imagine if everyone with a balcony made a colourful show of it – what different towns we would live in. There is health and safety to consider – you don’t want to risk troughs or baskets crashing to the ground – so mount them on sound fittings and check them regularly. For eye-level interest and some privacy you could grow hanging basket varieties for colour, dappled shade and a feeling of enclosure; alternatively, a balcony can be framed. Plants, such as climbers, will continue in pots for many years with the right care, which includes some feed during the growing season, and an annual refresh and top-up of the potting material, or potting them on if they need a bigger container. If you can harvest your rainwater and avoid using tap water, so much the better. If not, leaving tap water to stand for a day or two will benefit your plants by reducing the chlorine content.
These dry and sheltered places are also good for growing herbs and salad leaves, which both look and smell good, and you’ll have them handy to pick and use whenever you fancy.
