Plant a Climbing Flower Garden on Your Balcony
Houses that have balconies with room for a chair and table, and several pots can look beautiful when climbing flowers are added to the look. These climbers do not even need special trellises; all they need to do is to grow up and about the balcony railing. Containers deep enough for the roots of flowers like this should be at least 12″ across and 12″ to 14″ deep. Pretty decorative ceramic pots that have holes for drainage can be used, with the pot being placed at the corners, and center, of the balcony to allow the flowers to creep along naturally. Use regular garden soil for these flowers, with compost and fertilizer added for maximum blooms through the spring and summer seasons.
Climbing flowers that will grow best in these large pots are: morning glories, clematis, maypop, sweet peas, climbing hydrangea, and chocolate vine. Smaller plants like the morning glory can be planted several in one pot, while one per pot is enough for the larger climbers like the climbing hydrangea, clematis, and chocolate vine. If you start from young plants, you can train them to grow in certain directions on your balcony so that the view from down below resembles a lovely garden that looks like it has been planted with a certain intent.
Once the young plants start to grow, gently guide them up the narrow columns that make up your balcony fence. To do this with the more delicate plants like the morning glory, you can tie the vine to one column as it grows upwards. Once it has past the height of the column, it will start to lean either right or left along the railing. The flower’s vine will twist itself naturally and produce blossoms as it grows. With the hardier vines like the clematis, allow them to lean up the corner of the balcony and find its own way along the railing. If you decide to plant several different flowers, make sure they have enough room to spread out on the railing that serves as the protective barrier for the balcony. Use a color scheme that will make the plants look bright, like the maypop and morning glory in the pots. For the bigger vines, you can limit the container garden to just two pots so that they have ample space to climb on the balcony. Water the climbing flowers at least once weekly, and remove any dead leaves and buds that appear during the growing season. You will find yourself spending a lot of time on your balcony admiring your climbing flowers once they fully blossom.
Image Credit: Flowers on the balcony by Bill Nicholls, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
