If you live in the city, it doesn’t mean you can’t garden. For homes with a small yard or only cement areas, containers are the ideal solution for creating mini-gardens all around a balcony, porch, deck, or even just at the foot of some stairs. You can set up areas that create the look and feel of a hidden oasis with container gardening, even when there isn’t a foot of bare earth to spare. Here are a few ways to create a verdant, lush, look that is not only pleasing to the eye, but can also provide some edible treats.
Mix and Match
Not only can containers be mixed and matched to create an eclectic artistic style, but the plants that you choose to put in each container can also provide a tapestry of color or taste. For instance, you might decide that you want some small fig trees (which are ideal to plant in large containers) as the focal point for a deck. However, you also can include smaller containers where you can plant flowers and herbs for their colors. By creating a kitchen garden on a back deck, it can be easily accessible when you want to cut a sprig of rosemary or thyme from your container garden. The more pots you put up on a deck, the more levels of interest and the more artistic it can look. It can end up resembling a living patchwork quilt.
Vertical Container Gardening
If you want to create private garden spaces, you can opt for large rectangular or square boxes that you can add trellises to add a dimension of height. You can train any type of vine on these trellised containers from jasmine or grapes to cucumbers and squashes. Don’t assume that because you have no dirt nearby that you can’t create green privacy screens. As long as you can find suitable containers that will go the length of a wall, you will be able to make a privacy screen on bare concrete by a pool or on a rooftop garden.
Water Gardening
If your tastes run more along the lines of a Zen garden, and you want to include a bamboo screen and some water features on an outdoors balcony, it’s completely doable with containers. A water-tight container can be used to create a small pool for koi or water hyacinth. Include a lotus to get some spectacular blooms. Add some pebbles for interest and a water filtration system, and you can see that containers don’t have to have soil in them to create a stunning garden room. You can find a way to handle almost any design theme you want with the right container.
