There's an age-old adage that there are two sides to every story. There's a lesser well-known adage (but one that's equally relevant) that there are two sides to every balcony and this doesn't exclude the London Vegetable Garden!
Whilst I'm promoting the use of any urban space (however small) to grow vegetables and raise awareness of becoming a bit more self-sufficient (why should we give Tesco all our money?), the truth is that container gardening extends beyond bags of beans and pots of peas.
The photos in this entry show the other side of the London Vegetable Garden. Whereas the much publicised half contains pots of compost, seedlings, canes and grow bags, its twin represents my more botanical inclinations.
The modest display you can see in the photos represents a continuing project that's lasted over a year. Whilst the main bush-like plants and ivy have been a constant on my balcony, I've had the pleasure of adding and changing seasonal plants and flowers over several months.
Over winter, we had some beautiful pansies that lasted right through until a few months ago, which have now been replaced by some vivid petunias. As Bob Purnell explains in his superb book 'Crops in Pots', one of the most attractive features of container gardening is the ease in which you can move plants around to create varied displays that make a real impact in your garden (or on your balcony).
For balconies, one of the easiest and most space-effective ways to get started is to purchase a few window boxes. They make an immediate impact without taking up any ground space. On the London Vegetable Garden, we have one in the middle that's full of floor-length ivy now, turning a concrete balcony into more of a living garden.
For more ideas on container flowers and bedding plants that are easy to use, visit your local garden centre or check out the
BBC Gardening website.
Avid followers of the London Vegetable Garden could well be forgiven for thinking my agricultural attentions have been too focussed on flora and fauna in recent weeks. Fear not, as vegetables are very much still the focus of the balcony and this blog, but one of the window boxes has looked rather dilapidated in recent weeks and the time has come to re-do it.
It just so happened that when making a (compulsory I might add) visit to Tesco, they had some cheap bedding flowers on offer for £3. I've done well out of supermarkets for cheap gardening paraphernalia recently, including the excellent grow bags I blogged about a few weeks previously.
A pleasant weekend afternoon was spent potting this new plants into the window box, although in terms of outside space, it's proving more and more difficult to manoeuvre out on the balcony! I'm hoping that in a few weeks, we'll have a beautiful floral display acting as a colourful centrepiece of the London Vegetable Garden. Watch this space.
There's an age-old adage that there are two sides to every story. There's a lesser well-known adage (but one that's equally relevant) that there are two sides to every balcony and this doesn't exclude the London Vegetable Garden!
Over winter, we had some beautiful pansies that lasted right through until a few months ago, which have now been replaced by some vivid petunias. As Bob Purnell explains in his superb book 'Crops in Pots', one of the most attractive features of container gardening is the ease in which you can move plants around to create varied displays that make a real impact in your garden (or on your balcony).
