The balcony is the part of the apartment that is located on the street, and therefore, many residents often use it only as a storage room - to store unnecessary and old things that will most likely never be useful in everyday life. But with the onset of spring, the balcony can be turned into a wonderful flower garden, into the most romantic and vibrant part of your home. And if leeks and pepper seedlings are the only vegetation you use to decorate your balcony, then it's time to fix it.
Flowers help in the design of the apartment, emphasize its features and bring a note of romance, fabulousness and cheerfulness to the life of its inhabitants. The choice of specific varieties of the future flower garden depends on the location of your apartment relative to the sun (shady or sunny side), and on which floor your apartment is located. But the most important criterion, of course, is your sympathies and preferences.
Content
Site preparation
Of course, for the future winter garden need to prepare the place, to carry out at least cosmetic repairs. Think in advance what varieties of flowers will make up the balcony composition in order to choose the right paint for the railings and floor, which will harmoniously combine with the bouquet. Flowers should not blend in with the background of the walls.
Decide which part of the balcony you are ready to give for landscaping, maybe it will be only one box, or maybe most of your loggia. If you want your flower garden to be admired by passers-by from the street, prepare and strengthen the railing, calculate the weight of pots and boxes with earth so as not to overload them. Be especially careful if you own an old balcony, don't overload it, remember that a harmonious and elegant composition can be made with a small number of balcony flowers.
Dependence on the size of the balcony itself
Happy owners of large, spacious balconies can easily and without fear implement the most daring ideas for landscaping their apartments, because the space is entirely on their side. On such balconies, you can combine vertical, horizontal and even ceiling types of landscaping, walls, ceiling, partitions - all elements can act as assistants in creating complex, multi-tiered floral ensembles.- If you are the owner of a small balcony, this does not mean that the flower garden will be boring or uninteresting. Simply landscaping an insignificant space must be carried out in a horizontal plane. For example, long light boxes and pots with low varieties of flowers are hung from the outside of the balcony, along the perimeter of the railing, and more massive pots are located inside along the walls. Consider a convenient approach to watering and maintaining flowers in advance.
- Small, compact balconies are decorated vertically. Containers and pots with climbing plants are placed against the wall and twines are stretched to the ceiling for a vertical flower garden. A flower garden on a small balcony is formed from beans, grapes, wild peas.
Choose for a flower garden matching containersso that their volume allows the root system to develop freely. It can be flowerpots, wooden boxes, pots made of plastic or clay.
Lightweight plastic boxes and pots are ideal for planting flowers outside the balcony. Such compositions look especially beautiful in one long box. If there is a possibility that the structure may not withstand and break, then in this case, several light meter-long pots are used. To decorate the outer part of the balcony, buy boxes immediately with pallets, because in their absence, excess liquid will flow through the holes in the bottom directly onto the heads of passers-by.
Clay pots are more comfortable for flowers, because moisture stays in them longer and the soil is better saturated with oxygen. But due to its impressive weight, it is better to put such pots inside the balcony and grow larger and whimsical plants in them.
For small and medium sized balconies ideal planters - they are suspended from the ceiling and can create complex multi-stage compositions by adjusting their height - after all, you yourself decide at what distance from the ceiling to fix the pots.
Carefully consider the choice of soil, purchase it only in large, specialized stores or make it yourself using good black soil with sand and humus. Before you start filling the pot with soil, place a dishwashing cloth on the bottom of the pot, it will serve as an excellent layer in order to absorb water, maintaining moisture in the soil. Next, lay out a drainage layer - coarse sand, on top of which humus is laid out and black soil on it.
Choice of colors
Flowers can vary in life span.
Annuals
Such flowers live only one season, but many southern varieties in their home countries can live for several seasons. Therefore, if your balcony is glazed, insulated and the flowers themselves receive proper care, such varieties in the conditions of your loggia can delight you for several years in a row. When caring for such plants, do not forget to cut off the faded heads in time, then the rapid flowering will delight you for a long time.
Annuals are ideal for planting on the balcony, because a huge number of their varieties are distinguished by the brightness and spectacular coloring. For example, the widely known and adored by all Pansies have the widest spectrum of colors, or the Horned Violet, similar to them, has small, but very frequent flowers. Such balcony flowers can be planted both in pots behind the balcony and in hanging pots.- Ageratum is a southern annual; Ageratum Gauston, or Ageratum Mexican, is especially popular. The fragrant flowers, shaped like little fluffy colored pompoms, will keep you blooming for a long time throughout the summer. The variety of colors makes them ideal for your balcony. The sunny side will be preferred for breeding these flowers. Ageratum is ideally combined with Lobelia, which will decorate the balcony with charming flowers of delicate blue and blue shades.
- In addition to low-growing flowers, among annuals there are a huge number of representatives of medium-sized and tall varieties. Golden calendula will ideally decorate any flower arrangement, which, in addition to its aesthetic qualities, is widely known for its medicinal properties.
- The spectacular Datura looks very impressive, having large, tubular flowers of various shades. This flower has a rich history and has been revered by the Aztecs and Indians since ancient times, and the world famous American writer Carlos Castaneda once called it "the devil's grass" in one of his novels.
To help your small garden bloom as early as possible, most annuals grown by seedlings.
Biennials
Not so popular for breeding on the balcony.The fact is that in the first year, these plants develop only their stems and leaves and remain in a green state, and give flowers only in the second year. In addition, there are much fewer biennial varieties than others, and with improper care, such flowers can live not 2 years, but only a few months.
If you want to see your favorite biennial plant in the flower ensemble, plant it in a pot in the first year and keep in the apartment... And in the second year, transplant it into a common box to the rest of the flowers, forming the desired balcony composition.
The most popular balcony biennials are forget-me-not, viola, and, of course, daisy.
Perennials
Also not so popular among flower growers. Main problemassociated with their breeding, is that in winter it is difficult to preserve the root system of flowers and prevent them from freezing. For this reason, you have to look for a warm place where you can move the boxes with plants "for wintering". Of course, the exception is those perennial flowers, which are grown in separate pots and are simply brought into the apartment for the winter.
But, despite these difficulties, many people like to decorate their balconies with perennial flowers, preferring grapes, lianas, climbing roses, which are easily cut and wrapped up for the winter.
One of the varieties of perennials are bulbous flowers, the cultivation of which is not difficult. Planted in boxes in the fall, it is the bulbous ones that first open the spring season on the loggias, delighting their owners with bright, juicy colors and aromas. Daffodils, tulips, hyacinths are especially favorite varieties of bulbous flowers.
Flowers for the sunny side
The choice of flowers and their varieties largely depends on the location of the balcony and the degree of its illumination... Most of them are very thermophilic and it will not be difficult to compose a flower arrangement on the southern balcony. For loggias located on the sunny side, asters, petunias, purslane, asters, nasturtiums are ideal. Choose any southern flowers.
