POTS & PLANTS
/CREATING YOUR OWN SANCTUARY
by Peter W. Gribble
With the warmer weather, the balcony assumes an importance not always matched by its dimensions, especially if you’re using it as a dumping ground. How can it be your retreat away from lockdown, your private oasis, your ashram in the air, your cabin in the clouds, your meditation grove, if you’ve stashed your bicycle there, the rusting barbecue, last year’s dead plants, and the overflow from the storage locker?
Creating a fantasy retreat in a 9 by 5-foot balcony starts by reclaiming those 45 square feet. The first step in current de-cluttering philosophy is to empty the space completely. Yes, remove everything. Then sweep it out. Once done, this can make the balcony look either miraculously spacious or pitifully tiny. Doesn’t matter. It is now a blank canvas for ideas.
In the West End, you are one balcony amid thousands. How do you block out an unsightly feature in the distance or ensure privacy from prying eyes? It is as simple as changing your perspective. If you have flexible hips and knees, young or otherwise, dispense with the idea of a bistro set – the wobbly table and its two tippy chairs. Substitute it with weatherproof carpets, mats and cushions. Suddenly by sitting down at this level you’ve cozied up your sightlines and redefined your privacy by reducing the degree you are being observed.
Drawing the curtain of privacy around you depends again on enhancing your perspective of it. Add a feature that internalizes the garden and centres your attention away from the external distractions beyond the railing – something like a water bowl, a small fountain, a statue or as simple as an interesting rock on a low stand. Place your choice at the far end from your mats and cushions.
Now turn your half-hidden retreat into a living, breathing sanctuary — with bamboo.
A stand of bamboo behind the entire setup is a windbreak against the world.
Bamboo can be grown in pots. For a 9 by 5 balcony, one pot of it should be enough unless you have space for more. The three common varieties found in nurseries and garden centres are Phyllostachys nigra (black bamboo), Phyllostachys aurea (golden bamboo) and various cultivars of Fargesia the blue fountain bamboo that thrives in full shade and is very winter hardy.
Phyllostachys are well-known invasive runners, but both P. nigra and P. aurea will grow successfully in tubs and large pots. A friend living on the seventeenth floor of a condo building has had his golden bamboo growing happily in a large plastic pot for three years. When Phyllostachys are planted in the ground and allowed to roam free they can grow into breathtaking stands fifteen to twenty feet high. In pots they are reasonably well-behaved but need watching. One time in a nursery, I saw a six inch Phyllostachys aurea shoot had overnight punched out of the side of the grower pot it was in. The nursery staff marvelled at its attempt to escape and cautioned customers about making sure to keep members of the Phyllostachys family happy.
More amenable is Fargesia and its cultivars. All are clumpers, shade lovers, cold hardy and have graceful arching canes. They are great container plants and while some stand up more erect than others, most have an airy, loose arching growth habit that can take up more space than you may be willing to share. If you are willing, place a mat or chair beside it and Fargesia will softly embrace you. My Fargesia dracocephala ‘Rufa’ took several years to develop this habit fully and I felt I could disappear into it completely – the ultimate in botanical seclusion. If you can find the Fargesia murielae variety, it has the added benefit of being the favourite food of giant pandas. You’ll need a bigger balcony though.
Bamboos will drop leaves usually from the lower part of the culms or canes. It’s a natural phenomenon. Sometimes it’ll drop lots of leaves. Sudden hot weather can cause this, but it can also happen when the plant is unhappy. Figure out what’s wrong: does it need repotting (do this only late winter/early spring), some soil amender (well-composted), a jolt of fertilizer (think lawn fertilizer), more sun-less sun (reread the plant tag for your variety and its requirements), more consistent watering (that’s up to you)? Once you solve the problem(s) don’t throw out the dropped leaves. Mulched onto the soil surface, they are a near-perfect weed block.
Ted Jordan Meredith’s Bamboo For Gardens is the definitive guide for bamboo care.
I’m experimenting, of course. The house next door to a friend has a bamboo that had quietly crept into his back yard and he told me I could dig it up if I wanted. I seldom say no to plants. Since the house dated back to 1910, I’ve assumed the bamboo is Sasa palmata, a type of wide leaf bamboo introduced around 1925. It is cold hardy, although leaf tips and margins whither in the cold. Despite its running, invasive reputation, I was surprised to read in Ted Jordan Meredith’s gorgeous and comprehensive Bamboo for Gardens (Timber Press, 2001) that it makes an excellent container plant. In twenty plus years, I’ve never seen Sasa palmatum for sale in nurseries or even in catalogues specializing in bamboos. The stand I was eyeing seemed docile enough so I dug up the offending clump, took it home and potted it in a large black plastic pot 16” across with leaf mould compost at the bottom topped by good planter box soil and mixed in two handfuls of the standard 23-3-23 lawn fertilizer. Lawn fertilizer is the one to use since bamboo is also called the King of Grasses.
Bamboos take time to settle in. I lifted and divided my Fargesia and only now, after two years, is it looking a mite better. This is also Sasa’s second summer yet he has clearly settled enough to put out five new shoots six feet tall. Sasa beautifully backs my water bowl feature surrounded by potted ferns and defines this little corner in ways I had not anticipated. It is my new favourite oasis in the garden ... not necessarily for meditation, but to have a glass of wine at the end of the day. So, too, it will be with your balcony bamboo haven.
All this gardening advice may be moot if you’re the one keeping a close eye on the balcony activities of your neighbours. At least the bamboo grove now provides a better cover for continued observations.
Keep notes. Anthropologists of the future may be interested.
