Beginner Lessons for Container Planting and Balcony Gardening
We began setting up plants on our apartment balcony about three years ago, initially hiring a garden center to do it for us. At the end of last year, we decided it was time for a fresh start. We scrapped everything and took on the challenge of doing it ourselves, thinking we already knew quite a bit. However, we quickly realized how much more there is to learn when you’re responsible for designing, planting, and maintaining everything on your own.
Now, with three balconies filled with plants and a growing collection of indoor houseplants, we’ve gained more experience and enjoyment (as well as frustration) in taking care of them all. For anyone starting out with container gardening, here are the most important lessons we’ve learned.
Planning
Understand sunlight patterns
One of the first things to consider when planning your container garden is understanding how much sunlight your space receives throughout the day. Knowing this will help you select the right plants and place them in spots where they can thrive. Some plants can tolerate full sun once they are a bit more established and acclimated. You also need to factor in other aspects like humidity and temperature.
Don’t forget to account for seasonal changes. We live in a tropical climate with a dry and rainy season. Although it’s consistently warm year-round, the hours and direction of sunlight vary for each of our balconies depending on the time of year. What works during the rainy season might need adjustment during the dry season, as sunlight patterns shift.
Have a vision
We’re obviously not professional gardeners so we didn’t have a fully formed plan or vision from the very beginning. Just find out what kind of look appeals the most to you so that you will have some kind of directions. Looking at images on Pinterest definitely helps with ideas.
For us, we know we want to have some elements of Japanese gardens on our balcony as we fall in love with all the zen and neat gardens during our travels in Japan. This meant integrating small rocks, water features, and a tidy arrangement of plants. Large plants like Monstera, while beautiful, didn’t fit into that aesthetic since they can grow too wild for the structured look we had in mind. We also planned to incorporate a mix of plant heights and foliage textures, along with a few flowering plants
Choose plants
For beginners, we recommend starting small. Don’t plan to fill every available inch of your balcony right away. Instead, ease into it. As you get more comfortable with planting and caring for the plants, you can gradually add more. This approach also gives you time to observe your space and see what’s working, what’s missing, and what may need adjusting.
Our goal is to enjoy our balcony spaces and not becoming slaves to our plants. That’s why we got rid of all the roses (beautiful but too high maintenance for a balcony environment). So we started with low maintenance plants that we had known pest resistant or hardy. For example, for our climate, those are schefflera (umbrella plant), dischidia, ficus triangularis. For flowering plants, some great ones are petunia and bougainvillea.
Planting
Type of soil
The type of soil you use is important for plant growth, although some plants can be more forgiving than others. We’ve found that regular store-bought potting mix tends to be too heavy for many plants, especially in containers where good drainage is necessary. Nowadays, we always amend the potting mix to make it more airy and well-draining. For most of our plants, we now use a blend of about 30-40% potting mix, with the remainder made up of perlite, pumice, coco coir, and orchid bark.
Some exceptions are succulents and Mediterranean herbs, which will need sandy soil. Plants in self-watering pots will have chunkier soil while those that love moist soil like Maidenhair fern can have a less chunky mix so it doesn’t dry out too fast.
Loosen the root balls
Loosening the roots allows them to spread out into the fresh soil, absorb nutrients, and establish properly which leads to healthier and more robust plant growth. Besides, plants from nurseries or garden centers are often in tightly packed soil that’s designed to keep them alive in that specific environment, not necessarily yours. So we should loosen the root balls and discard some of the existing soil. This step is especially important for succulents.
You can use your fingers, or even chopsticks or forks to gently loosen the roots. Some root disturbance is okay and can encourage growth, just try to avoid causing too much damage.
Maintaining
Water the plants
Learning the water needs of each plant can be a tricky and sometimes frustrating process. I’m still working on improving my watering skills. Newly planted additions often require more frequent watering during the first week or so to help them establish their roots. Flowering plants generally need more water than non-flowering ones, and smaller containers tend to dry out faster than larger, taller ones.
Our usual practice is to water when the topsoil feels dry, making sure to water thoroughly. We installed garden hose on all of our balconies to make watering less time-consuming. For plants in self-watering pots, we allow 1-2 days without refilling the reservoir to give the soil a chance to dry out a bit before adding more water.
Understand space constraints
Space is a major factor when gardening in an apartment and placing plants on the balcony as we do. With limited space, it’s important to be realistic about how many plants you can comfortably maintain. We’ve had to rearrange our setup a few times to avoid overcrowding, which not only affects the visual appeal but can also impact the health of the plants.
I love the idea of having as many plants as possible, but I realized seeing them crammed together stresses me out a lot. Over time, plants will grow and expand, taking up more space than they initially did. Giving them enough room also promotes good air circulation, which helps prevent pests and diseases.
Pest management
I absolutely hate dealing with pests, and it was one of the main reasons I decided to get rid of all the roses as they were just too prone to infestations. To reduce the headache of pest control, I make sure to include pest-resistant plants in our garden mix, such as bougainvillea, snake plants, and ZZ plants. My goal isn’t to eliminate pests entirely, but to keep them to a manageable level. If I spot any, I remove them manually or cut off the badly infested leaves/stems and spray the affected plant with rubbing alcohol. Another strategy we use is giving the plants a strong blast of water once a week, or every other week, to help dislodge any pests that might be hiding on the leaves or stems.
One important thing we’ve learned is not to get too emotionally attached to any particular plant. If a plant attracts more pests than we’re willing to deal with, or simply doesn’t thrive in our space, we won’t hesitate to replace it. My husband will categorize those as “development needed” and if they don’t improve, they will be move to the “managed out” list. The good thing is plants are very cheap where we live.
Final Thoughts
We are not experts in container planting or apartment gardening. In fact, we’re still learning and adjusting our methods as needed. What we’ve shared here is based on our personal experiences, and we hope it offers some helpful insights for anyone just starting out with container gardening. There’s always more to discover, but part of the joy comes from experimenting and finding what works for your own space.
While advice and tips found online can be useful, it’s important to adapt them to your specific climate. For example, what’s considered “full sun” in a mild or temperate climate is vastly different from what we experience in our hot, humid, tropical location.