Growing Perennial Flowers for Renters

by Doug
(In his Garden)

This blog post is courtesy of my brand new book that I'm currently writing. I thought you might find it useful this year; so I'm sharing it ahead of publication. Please pass this along to anybody you know who's in this situation as it really does work well (he says from personal experience). And watch for my book - I'll let you know when it hits the publishing world.

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Perennial Gardens for Renters

Is quite possible to have a perennial garden on the patio or balcony where there is no soil or available space for planting in the ground. Happily, the trick is very simple and can be done by any gardener with a few select and hardy perennial flowers. The plants that will grow well in this system are listed in the plant section later on in the book.

As I said, it's a simple system and all it requires is a series of 12 to 14 inch flowerpots that can be placed lip to lip in the garden area selected. Fill the entire space with these pots and fill the pots with an artificial peat–based soil mix.

Now, you have a series of pots sitting on the ground filled with soil ready for planting. Decide on the plants you want to grow, buy them at a garden center, and get ready for gardening.

The important point, is that you're also going to buy enough bags of mulch to cover the area you've decided is your garden. Once the plants are in the pots, the mulch is spread and you have an instant garden. And yes, you want to fill the spaces between the pots with mulch as well to keep the pots cool and the air spaces to a minimum.


All other activities in the garden are now the same as if you were growing in the ground. You deadhead, prune, and enjoy the flowers, just as in the ground.

You do have to water and feed the plants as if they were being grown in a container. So see the section on container growing for recommendations about watering and feeding.

The main question in this style of temporary gardening is “How to overwinter the plants?” And the answer is that it depends. If the garden is sitting on soil and you're using the bone hardy plants listed in this book, the vast majority will survive with no protection other than the mulch. This is assuming, that you live in a USDA zone 4 or warmer.

If you're trying to do this on a balcony or deck, and your outside winter temperature goes below 5°F for several days in a row, then the plants will likely die.

Above 5°F, and most of the plants in this book will survive. They may not be happy at this temperature but they will likely survive.

The problem with balcony gardening and this system, is the soil will dry out and the plants will desiccated during the height of the winter. The solution to this is to water once a month from December through February.

I have done this system in condos that I lived in and it worked quite nicely. I cannot guarantee survival on a balcony.

The advantage of this system is that if you move, you simply pick up the pots put then in the van, sweep the mulch into bags to take with you, and your garden is instantly movable.