We just moved into an apartment with a small balcony (room for a couple of chairs, but that’s about it.) Right now I have a potted chili pepper plant out there, but when winter comes, the plant will have to come inside.
I find the bare, empty, unadorned balconies on our buildings depressing, and I’m already fantasizing about beautiful plants to put out in spring, but does anyone have any classy decorating ideas for winter?
I don’t want to do extravagant Christmas decorations… Just something that will look a little more pleasant than an empty balcony from November through March.
You don’t say your location, but even in the dead of winter, there are some trees/bushes that retain their green leaves - put one or two in large pots at either end of the balcony. You can also get those rope lights and hide them so there is a nice ambient lighting effect (don’t just wrap them around the railing or something tacky). Also, there are some very cool outdoor lighting sconces - my guess there is probably some tacky glass/brass thing hanging there now, if any. You can also buy inexpensive pin-point flood lights to accent the bushes or whatever.
The trick is in the lighting, and making sure there is something worth illuminating.
More power to ya for wanting it to look nice all year round. Hope someday you are a homeowner and move next door to me!
Pod, do you live in a place where geraniums work well?
They survive even my black thumb. I don’t just have a black thumb, I have four black thumbs, eight black fingers and eight black toes, yet any geraniums placed in my windows are able to survive; nay, even thrive. For a couple years, I had the kind that hang down; when I got that room the poor things were absolutely spindly and by the time I left they covered over half of the window for my neighbor below (she liked them, since the actual view was a wall about 4ft away).
Mom’s now have some kind of worm… I’ve told her she should just forget about all that antiworm, forget about watering lightly every two days, and change instead to water about once a week and half a can of flat soda occasionally
Get a plant stand kind of like [url=http://www.righttrak.net/mall/images/4-tier-metal-plant-stand.jpg] with a silk poinsetta plant for each area - the plants come in different colors too, so it would look cool.
And trust me when I say the silk plants last forever - my mother in law gave us one as a decoration maybe five years ago - we never get around to putting it away with the Christmas decorations and my dog’s been using it to play dodgeball with lately. It’s still FINE.
A large container with an assortment of dried grasses and such can be very pretty. Are you in zone 6? Would a mid-sized potted evergreen work? You could hang little bird food treats on it over the winter, and then give it to someone to plant in the spring.
You could get one of those topiarys, and a really pretty windchime. Add to this a nylon chair that you can cover in blankets/furs, and keep these in a … Some people enjoy going out to smoke and such, and might enjoy curling up in a chair and piling on the blankets while looking at snow.
Nice to know about the poinsettia’s relative nontoxicity – at least vis-a-vis humans.
I’d be wary of getting windchimes. If you were living in your own freestanding house, fine, but windchimes might just put you on your apartment neighbors’ shit list.
