Small Space Gardening

Your gardens make me envious and I miss mine since I've been in my apartment....but I give it my best effort in my 4.5' x 16' balcony "garden"......which is surrounded, creatively...I think... with stuff I love.

My "garden" is a collage of sentimental and weathered and rusty antiques....chachkees....and of course...plants....mostly live...with bits of faux.

A dilapitated bamboo chair and table (garage sale)...and a small patio table (weathered of course) that my brother built for me...more than 40 years ago.....and a weathered garden bench that sits at one end of my balcony, and there's a rusty iron stool...the iron base, a discard from an old stool from a "drafting table" from an office that my late husband worked in years ago..and the iron seat of the stool, is the seat from the horse-drawn farm mower from my dad's farm that my Dad sat on, cutting hay in the 40's and 50's ......and there's a rusty milk-can ...and some old wood fruit boxes, sm/med/lg.......a brass plant rack that I painted to resemble rusty iron.......and atop one of the old boxes is a rusty, ornate antique heater grate that serves as a "table-top". There's an antique washboard with a blue enamel scrub-board.....an antique torqouise enamel water-jug...an old copper kettle...an antique mirror that I mounted on a wire screen behind the old garden bench...cast iron lanterns.....bird houses...chachkees.....chimes......my favorite old..old.. garden spade (weathered by me and previous "diggers")....an antique coal-chute shovel ... and a 36 inch bench that I created with concrete blocks (stained to look like terra cotta) and a wood seat that I stained walnut (now weathered somewhat) and stencilled with an ivy pattern. There is also a "wrought-iron" look chair near my balcony entrance. I've laid a black rubber runner along the length of my balcony with grass-like mats at the entrance and at each end. Of course, mingled amongst the above...are garden chachkees and patio lights! The decor surrounds my balcony and still allows seating for 3 or 4 people.

My dilapitated chair - I've removed the seat from this chair and I sank an old navy-blue-chipped enamel canner into the seat to make it into a planter (years ago, my hubby drilled holes in the bottom for drainage). It contains my coleus plants which I will plant this weekend.
My dilapitated table - holds a grapevine "screen" in the background and a potted salmon-colored geranium and purple spike (dracena?) as well as a ceramic "mossy-looking" bunny...nestled in a grapevine wreath base.

The old table that my brother built...holds my asparagus fern atop one of the old weathered boxes which is set in a corner at the back of the table.. and a concrete garden ornament of a guitar-playing frog that was a gift years ago is in the foreground.
The rusty iron stool holds my wave petunias in an antique white enamel pot.
The old milk can is the base for another plant.....the asparagus fern that I had split.
.....and so it goes......

This weekend, I still want to purchase 2 Lotus vines because I love their silver color and their feathery texture.

I've also potted a large pot of herbs...sage/parsely/dill/basil..and then there's my pot of beautiful trailing Rosemary, which I wintered indoors.
I have a Virginia Creeper in a large pot on the corner of my garden bench which is an "ancestor" of the original plant that I bought more than 40 years ago.

The "faux iron" brass plant rack will hold the two pots of Morning Glories I planted that I hope will trail across my balcony rail in and amongst the tree branch that I will lay as a support. (The morning glories are now about 5" tall!!)

I did many "decorative/retail displays" in my career...and those lessons serve me well in cramming and stacking stuff into small spaces.

Of course...I have my folk-art painted garden sign saying "Mom's Garden"

My balcony faces a busy retail area, but when I sit amongst my "garden space"...I am in my garden.

Is that really your garden Willows? Sounds beautiful. I could get lost just being in a little space like that. Can I come and visit, just to see. :)

I planted my geraniums yesterday in the front border with white alyssiums. In 4 planters a red/white/blue theme. Red geraniums, white alysiums, blue lobellias and a dracenia spike in each pot.

I planted some double morning glories but I don't see them coming up yet. Maybe it has been too hot and dry. Will post more pictures of my tree peonies when I get a chance.

I am happy you are working so hard but I know it is rewarding and fun.

Enjoy your weekend.

Willows, your balcony sounds amazing!

What a good job you have done making a special
place to relax in with plants and things of sentimental
value to you.

Thanks for describing it all for us, it was so interesting
to read.

Willows you are my kind of friend. I never throw out anything. I would rather incorporate it into something useful. I am still using my canners for canning but that is a very good idea there.

I have an old kitchen sink in the ground where I have planted my winter onions. My son is re-doing the yard and tells me the sink will have to be dug up and moved to a different location. I told him that was fine. He put it in its place since his dad has been gone. Speaking of which.....that man would have a fit at my yard. He always hated lots of stuff to move around. The son is just the opposite and takes more after me I guess. The more planted the better I like it.

I do remember hubby saying he hated a weedy garden. The day before he went into the hospital he mowed our yard and tilled the garden. This was in early Sept of 2004. He told me not to let the weeds grow and take away from the garden soil.