Create your own beautiful apartment balcony garden
Creating a green and blooming balcony garden for your retirement apartment can bring a lot of pleasure. An apartment balcony garden lets you flex your green fingers without worrying about chores such as digging, de-slugging or lawn-mowing and you’ll gain a tranquil space to sit in and enjoy when the sun’s out.
The low effort and high rewards of balcony gardening make it very appealing and many of our retirement homes for sale or rent include balconies or patios ready for you to transform into your own green haven. Just remember to leave room for a comfortable chair so you can relax and enjoy your miniature paradise!
6 balcony garden ideas with tips from the experts
From the right plants for the space to thoughts on colour schemes, discover how to create an idyllic balcony garden with our top tips from industry leaders.
1. Choose plants that will thrive in your space
Isabelle Palmer, City Garden Designer and Founder of The Balcony Gardener, explains the importance of choosing the right type of plants for your balcony. A proud owner of two plant-filled balconies at her flat in a converted church in north London, Isabelle is well-versed in choosing plants that flourish. Sunlight, space and the hardiness of the plants should all be considered before you get started.
“If you want a balcony garden that looks good all year, the key is to choose plants that suit the conditions. Start with evergreens to give you all-year-round colour as a base. Box, fatsia, camellias and star jasmine are some of my favourites. Then add perennials, which have flowers that come back every year, such as hydrangeas, salvias or clematis.” - Isabelle Palmer, City Garden Designer and Founder of The Balcony Gardener.
Like any garden, you can change your planting with the seasons, but much more easily. Once you’ve established your evergreens and perennials, you can add pots of your favourite spring bulbs or troughs of summer and winter bedding. Herbs are a wonderfully fragrant addition in the summer–rosemary, thyme and mint grow well in pots, as does lavender.
Meanwhile, cyclamen or winter-flowering pansies will brighten your outdoor space in the colder months. As in a border, you can layer your planting in a container so that as one plant is dormant, another takes over–ensuring your balcony garden looks fresh and interesting throughout the year.
2. Consider the colours
Do you want a blaze of colour or a peaceful oasis of greenery? In a petite balcony garden, too many colours can look messy. Consider how you would like your space to make you feel then think about plants that suit your tastes.
“A minimal palette will have a more harmonious effect. Choose colours as if you were planting up a tub, with the same family of colours or ones that contrast well together.” - Guy Barter, Chief Horticulturist at The Royal Horticultural Society.
If you’d like a simple but classic green theme, you can create a dramatic effect by choosing evergreen plants with varying shapes, textures, heights and shades. Plants with large, sculptural leaves–like Fatsia japonica, which produces creamy blooms in October–will give your balcony garden an instant hint of the tropics. Fatsia grows quite large, so will look best in a corner at the back of a group. Arrange pots of plants with varying textures, from feathery ferns to the pointed architectural spears of an Astelia or Cordyline, and mix different shades from silvery green and luminous bright to dark and glossy. A green and white balcony garden also looks refreshing and elegant. There’s a huge variety of white-flowering plants to choose from, many of which are scented, such as viburnums. Or try the beautiful Camellia ‘Cinnamon Cindy’, which flowers from January to April.
3. Use varying heights to create interest
Plants of varying heights can make your balcony feel like an outdoor ‘room’, so try to include some taller plants. Alternatively, place a narrow bench against the railings for a row of pots to stand on to create added depth in your balcony garden.
Trailing plants also look good on a bench or in a trough fixed securely to railings. If you want a climber, evergreen clematis, such as Cirrhosa var purpurascens ‘Freckles’ or Cartmanii Fragrant Oberon, would look lovely planted in a trough and climbing up a trellis against the wall.
If you have a covered or shady balcony, climbers should be avoided as they may become straggly. “They [climbers] will always be stretching towards the light,” Guy explains.
4. Sunshine or shade? Get plants that thrive
While most flowering plants like the sun, exposed balconies with no shelter can be windy and dry. In this instance, Mediterranean plants, such as lavender and rosemary, are good choices. Meanwhile, geraniums can add a riot of colour on sunny balconies: they need minimum watering and will flower all through summer and autumn.
In contrast, some plants thrive in shade. While many gardeners fight a losing battle with hostas because slugs love them, planting them in pots on your balcony garden keeps them safe from those slimy predators. This allows you to enjoy their broad, variegated leaves and tall trumpet-shaped pastel flowers without worry.
Bamboo can be difficult to control when it’s left to grow naturally in a typical garden. However, when contained in a pot or trough, bamboo can be a stylish addition to any balcony garden, producing an abundance of tall leaf-bearing canes. Bamboo Chimonobambusa will be happy in the shade.
For plants that will grow in sun or partial shade, Guy recommends Elaeagnus x ebbingei—beloved by flower arrangers for its small flowers and beautiful dual-coloured leaves. While Barter advises against potted grasses, grass-like sedges are recommended. This can include the likes of Carex buchananii, renowned for its spikes containing tiny green or brown flowers.
5. Think about all year-round attraction
As the seasons come and go, be sure to consider some more permanent fixtures in your balcony garden. With its dense foliage, the Pieris is a wonderful plant for year-round interest and looks perfect in a large pot. There are several varieties but Pieris ‘Forest Flame’ is one of the best. In early spring, the new leaves are a glorious bright red, turning pink and green as the year wears on. In April and May, long sprays of white blooms appear. Another wonderful year-round plant is Nandina domestica, a small shrub with attractive leaves that are a purplish colour when young and again in winter. It has spikes of star-shaped white flowers in summer, followed by red berries in autumn.
6. Opt for sweet-smelling varieties for success
Enliven the senses with plants that not only look good but smell good too. Placing fragrant plants within your balcony garden means you will be near enough to enjoy their delicate scent.
Some of the most popular fragrant plants for balconies include:
- Lavenders: ideal for sunny balconies as they can withstand dryness
- Lilies: perfect for a gorgeous pop of summer colour and fragrance
- Rosemary: practical for the kitchen, as well as visually and fragrantly appealing
- Dwarf Sweet Box (Sarcococca hookeriana var humilis): great for producing highly scented white flowers in winter
- Mexican Orange Blossom (Choisya x dewitteana ‘Aztec Pearl’): offering beautiful aromas from a compact evergreen shrub.
Enjoy independent retirement living with McCarthy Stone
From beautiful retirement bungalows with gardens to apartments with balconies, our properties provide ample space to continue your green-fingered hobbies. Many of the gardens at our retirement communities also offer potting sheds and borders for planting. Downsizing your home means less space to clean and tidy, and less maintenance gives you more time and energy for the hobbies you love—like gardening.
Explore independent living in our Retirement Living developments. Or, for the option of a bit more support as and when you need it, take a look at our Retirement Living PLUS properties instead. To find out more contact us online or call our friendly team on 0800 201 4811.
