Reaching for the Skies

Any external space, no matter how small, is better than none at all. I can’t imagine living many floors above the ground with no possibility of stepping out into fresh air. I remember one balcony that was so narrow that when sitting with my back to the building wall, my knees would touch the balcony railing opposite. And yet, right through the afternoon, it was in full sun and I spent many an enjoyable hour squeezed into the space enjoying the breeze, the warmth, the sounds and the view. I’m lucky my current balcony is bigger with flowers running around the top-rail.

Balcony flowers in trough fixed to balcony rail

Up until recently, many apartments were built with no practical external spaces at all. Any flat-dwellers who wanted to grow plants outside were reduced to precarious window boxes – that is, if they had openable windows!

Narrow window boxes fixed to the window cill, where the owner has no garden space - fortunately not high above the ground.

These days, have no external space seems an almost impossible idea, unless the buildings are very tall, in which case the practicalities require different solutions. Accommodation that imprisons people many storeys above the ground, divorces them from the outside world. Being separated from nature can affect our well-being in ways that may not be immediately apparent. It can diminish our appreciation of the importance of the external environment. It may even reduce our empathy for the lives of the creatures and plants that live there. We may forget their importance to our very existence. As more than half of the world’s population now live in cities, mostly in apartment buildings, balconies have never been more important.

Keeping plants is a fantastic way of reconnecting with the seasons and with nature, whether this is indoor houseplants or garden plants and it is great to see so many balconies of all sizes being used for this purpose – brimming with colourful flowering plants. And there seems to be lots of experimenting going on too, including vegetable growing. I have successfully grown tomatoes and chillies in the past – two vegetables almost guaranteed to give a crop of some sort, so worth having a go! I decided not to pinch out the tops of the tomatoes, letting them grow and grow, tying them to bamboo canes fixed against the balcony railing. In this way they eventually also provided a fantastic leafy green screen right up to the underside of the balcony above, as well as giving me lots of tasty tomatoes.

Salad crop being transferred from an inside windowsill to the balcony

Given the right containers and the right physical conditions, many plants that thrive in our gardens will thrive equally well on balconies, so SeeHow’s growing guides and illustrations are still useful. There are two key enemies. One is nutrition (feeding / watering), but this is the same for container plants at ground level, except that balconies are often protected entirely from rain. In this case, the plants rely entirely on human support. But all containers should ideally be watered manually – don’t rely on sufficient rain finding its way into the pots. The second enemy is exposure to wind / draughts. The higher the building, the more likely the balcony will be exposed to unusual and stronger-than-average wind speeds that can damage the leaves and increase dehydration. This is because taller buildings often create strong positive and negative air pressures, leading to powerful air currents flowing parallel to the building façade – both up and down and side-to-side.

Tomatoes, nasturtiums and herbs all growing happily, well above the ground

Last year we also experimented with chives, wild strawberries, basil and nasturtiums – all useful plants and easy to grow, as well as more tomatoes and chillies and colourful flowers too along the balcony rail. Whereas many balcony growers keep their space neat and tidy, I’ve noticed a few ‘wild balconies’ in my wanderings, with climbers and ivies being allowed to grow freely – must be great being inside looking out!

Wild balcony planting!

This is perfect for wildlife too. All insects and other creepy-crawlies have been hard-hit by climate change. Biodiversity loss is much more important than generally acknowledged by the media. Basically, these often-invisible creatures are at the bottom of the natural food-chain. Bird numbers have therefore also been impacted. Balconies can help (just like living walls). To do our bit, we have created a small screened surface, with vines that shield a birdhouse filled with seeds. This now attracts a local family of sparrows – with sometimes more than 20 at a time coming to feed! Large hooded crows also come, for walnuts and blue tits too. They are all such intelligent creatures, with their own ways of communicating. Watching them up so close, through the glass window, is a great joy.

Over the last decade, balcony planting has been taken (literally) to new levels of sophistication in other parts of the world and the UK is lagging behind in exploring the possibilities this offers. For example, a number of much taller residential buildings have been designed and built in Italy, with very large balconies and verdant planting that even includes small trees. These buildings are not just vertical gardens, they are vertical forests. When I look at them I’m reminded of equatorial rainforests where the trees themselves live in symbiosis with colonies of epiphytic plants – in effect creating habitats similar to the forest floor, but up in the canopies.

Bosco Verticale, Milan, Italy. Photo by Mattia Spotti on Unsplash

There really are no ends to the sustainable possibilities open to us when we reach for the skies.

The above Text and all Photographs (except as noted) are copyright of Wincenty (Wicek) Sosna. Please contact SeeHow for permission to reproduce in any way, in part or as the complete text.