Live in an apartment and want your own garden? Jyl Ghoneim lends a hand After a hard day's work, coming home to an apartment that is small, hot and noisy is not appealing to many of us. Imagine coming home to that same apartment but suddenly finding yourself on your balcony or rooftop surrounded by lush greenery and wonderfully perfumed air. The thought certainly entices the imagination. Container and roof-top gardening is the easiest and least-expensive route to attaining that fervently sought-after haven of peace, beauty, luxury and relaxation. It does not matter whether you have four square metres or 150 square metres of balcony, yard or rooftop to work with. The possibilities for creating beauty in this concrete jungle are endless. The first step to container gardening is choosing which space you want to use. The most successful and beautiful gardens are those that have been planned well in advance. Safety should always come first in the planning process. If your choice is a rooftop, make sure your building is architecturally able to support the weight of soil, terracotta or clay pots, stepping stones, border materials, gravel, water features, etc. Will you be placing patio furniture on your roof? Will you need to place a fence around the edges of the building to keep your kids, pets, tools, etc. from falling off the roof? Make absolutely sure your building can support the weight. You don't want the roof to collapse. Consulting an architect or engineer is usually the best bet to determine whether a plan is feasible or not. A rooftop garden, while the most impressive and uncommon, is also the most dangerous architecturally. If choosing to garden in a small yard in front of your home or apartment, make sure the area is properly fenced off. Small children and animals love yards with gardens. They are the best place in the world for your child and pets to play. A proper fence ensures that small children and pets will not be harmed, while also ensuring the garden will not be trampled on by passers-by. Is there a water spigot nearby to make watering the garden easier? Can one be easily installed? If not, make sure the hoses you use are not lying around, creating a hazard. A simple hose spool is a great solution to this problem. Make sure the plants you plan on using are non-toxic to animals and humans. For example, caster beans, which grow beautifully in desert climates, can easily poison humans and animals. Front gardens are normally very safe and are probably the most rewarding to families. It takes little more than common sense to keep these types of gardens safe. If a balcony is the haven of choice, make sure the plants you use are not sitting unsecured on ledges, where they can fall off. Again, make sure the plants you use are non-toxic to animals and humans. Will you be using buckets to water with? If so, remember not to leave them sitting with water in them, as small children have fallen into buckets head first and have not been able to get back out. Buckets with standing water are also the perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes. For the most part, balcony gardens, while the smallest of the three, are the safest and easiest to maintain. Once the safety issues have been addressed and resolved, it is time to move ahead with planning which types of plants to use. You must ask yourself important questions. What are your favourite colours? A good combination of colour and type will cut down on boredom. Who wants to see a garden with only pink flowers? What are your favourite flowers, fruits and vegetables? Climbing roses are a favourite of mine. Maintenance is fairly easy, and they do not require water twice a day to keep them thriving. Strawberries, tomatoes and carrots are easily grown on balconies and are certain to please the kids. I will be planting both at the beginning of next spring. What are your needs? Personally, I need functionality, a place to bring guests, a romantic alcove and somewhere relaxing to go when I can no longer handle stress. For these purposes, I plan on planting vines, which will provide seclusion and cut down on noise and dust. I need enough room to be able to sit up to three guests, so I cannot overload the space. Therefore, large bushes are not an option. I need romance, so fragrant flowers and soft lighting is a must. Finally, I need a private place to get away from it all, so I need tall plants that block the neighbours' view of the balcony, while providing them with something beautiful to look at. Other factors in planning a garden are how much maintenance you are willing to do, how often you take trips out of town, and how much you want to spend. The basic rule of thumb with gardening is the harder the work, the more impressive the results. Gardens can take anywhere from 10 minutes per week to an hour per day and beyond. The hardier the plants, the less time you will have to spend watering, fertilising, feeding and weeding. If you are looking for something more impressive than a cactus garden, you should plan on spending at least 10 minutes of maintenance time every day. If you are away from home often, plan on depending on your neighbours, family, friends or hired help to do the maintenance for you. If you are lucky enough to know a glass blower who can create a bulb syringe type watering system, you will not have to worry about being away from home for up to a week at a time. Before bringing plants home, you will need to buy pots. Small-space gardeners should use the rule of thumb that less is more. Choose a few large, medium, small and extra-small pots and move them around the area before they are planted (for ease of carrying). This is generally the best way to figure out how many plants you want and what will look best where. Garden designers usually place the tallest plants at the back. Medium-height plants go in the middle. Create a focal point by using a small bird bath, electric-powered water fountain or favourite pottery item among medium-sized pots. The smallest and least colourful plants belong up front, where they will not be forgotten. Once you have deduced how much time you have, what your needs and wants are, and how you want your pots to be arranged, the next step is choosing the plants. Shopping for plants will be the most fun. There is also plenty of help available at local nurseries. If you so desire, a simple Google search will provide enough background information on plant species to help you choose which plants are best for you. A good mix of fruits, vegetables and flowers is a rewarding path to follow. Tomatoes, while tall and bushy, are a fun alternative to using the usual coniferous bushes and small trees. An unusual, but expensive, plant that does well in desert climates is the bonsai tree. These are small and for the lazy gardener an excellent choice. The worse you treat them the better they do. Carrots, lettuce and herbs are also great choices for our climate. Normally started from seed, these vegetables can be placed in small pots in the foreground of the garden, where they are easily watered by the kids. Insects also tend to stay away from herbs, which is a blessing in Cairo. Grape vines afford privacy and will reward you and your family with delicious snacks later on. Bougainville vines provide lovely flowers and give excellent shade and privacy once well established. Vines should be placed in deep pots in the background of the garden. They should be well watered once a day until their root systems are well established and until the weather cools down in the autumn. The plants also require some sort of trellis to climb on. Consider using lattice, which will help protect plants until they are big and strong. Strawberries grow quickly and are also hardier than one might think. Marigolds are easy to maintain and help keep pesky mosquitoes away. For greenery, I like to use succulents and cacti such as hen and chicks and barrel cacti. Both require a minimum of maintenance and grow very well. The final step to creating your garden will be simply to transplant the new plants into their waiting pots. Because you have prearranged the pots, there should be minimal readjustments. Maintenance is now up to you to delegate. You can always use my mother's old rule when sharing responsibility for the garden. All family members who partake in the pleasures of the garden are responsible for helping maintain it. Mother stuck to this rule strictly, and kids usually do not mind. Nearly all aspects of gardening are a pleasure.
