Wednesday 14 January 2015

Welcome To My Tiny Balcony Garden Project

Let me introduce you to my pride and joy. This is my tiny balcony garden:


As you can see it is teeny tiny and suffers badly from rain. This year I am aspiring to transform this humble patio from a waterlogged plant graveyard to a bohemian retreat.
Size 
The balcony measures 2m deep by 3m across with a 2m wooden fence around it. It is north facing :( and to add to the challenges there is a 2m thick hedge on the eastern edge, meaning the entire area gets very little sun. The most sunlight is early in the morning on the left side of the balcony.


Water
Why all the umbrellas you ask? Well, apart from the fact that I live in the eternally precipitous country of Ireland, my upstairs neighbours' balcony is about half a meter shorter than my garden. this means the front edge and the right edge are not covered and also get all the run off from the 5 stories above me. Over the past year I have resorted to umbrellas as a means to protect my poor plants from water logging, to very little avail (but hey, at least they add colour when the flowers all die!) 


When you add these two factors together the result is a relatively dry and sunny bottom left corner, so I am going to try and capitalise on this. Unfortunately my neighbours are on the left and they seem to think I want their bins up against my fence :/ Since this is a rental apartment, there are certain limitations to what I can and can not change. MOAR CHALLENGES!

Wish List for the Finished Space
- 2-person daybed for the bf and me to sit out in and have coffee
- a variety of plants that thrive rather than die with all the water
- storage for our bin and christmas decorations
- privacy
- a usable outdoor space sans umbrellas

I started this blog because I can't find other blogs about how to deal with such a user-unfriendly scenario, but I know that most of my neighbours and many of my friends have similar situations so I thought it might be useful for people to see what can be achieved with a little creativity. And the final handicap to this project is that I would like to spend as little money as possible. Let the challenge commence!
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3 comments:

  1. Sommerjam15 January 2015 at 05:39

    What about adding your own gutter to the upstairs neighbor's balcony, to channel the run-off ... into their trash bins?

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    Replies
    1. Dr. Who?16 January 2015 at 09:33

      That's a great idea Jeff. That's my weekend sorted so:)

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  2. Po Bradley16 January 2015 at 11:49

    @Jeff thanks a mil for the suggestion! Please give me more :) Unfortunately the gap is about 40cm wide (16" for the metrically challenged). That's about double the width of a normal gutter pipe. Moreover, my building has a residents committee that frowns on putting your laundry out to dry on your balcony, so I imagine I would need permissions to alter the outside of the building at all - which I would probably have to ask my landlord about.

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