Planning a balcony

The style you choose for your garden will influence not just the plants and pots you use, but also the function of the space. A Japanese style might be too densely planted to allow a large dining table and barbecue, but would be perfect if you need a quiet space to relax. For an urban garden you may want something that will work like an outdoor room, and it’s useful to think of the plants as items of furniture. That means not getting confused by the endless variety of plants and how a small plant will grow within its position. Visit a nursery, find full grown plants that you like the look of, and bring them back at as close to full size as you can manage. For an area in full sun, just choose from the plants in the fully exposed part of the nursery, for a fully shaded area, choose from the outdoor shade-clothed area, and so on for indoors. In Sydney the tough plants like figs, lillypillies, magnolias, camellias (kind of in order of hardiness) look good all year as standard (tall) plants, and will be restricted in size by their pot size.
Pot choice goes with plant choice. For a Japanese style you might like a variety of glazed pots, for a succulent garden, terracotta with scoria mulch. For a formal type (like a few dwarf trees) a single pot type works well, although you can grade the sizes. Tapered pots are a problem on exposed areas as they blow over once they’ve got anything with height in them. By the way, saucers are for indoor plants. Few plants appreciate sitting in water, and even a cm of standing water quickly breeds mosquitoes.
Which brings me to water features. These are really worth it. We have a big 60 cm diameter 60 cm high glazed pot, with the drainage hole caulked and the whole inside painted with black sealant. It’s planted with a sedge, a waterlilly and some Elodea, stocked with a couple of comets, and has a home-made bamboo spout hooked up to a small pump. The trickle of water is nice background noise that cuts out the city rumble. There’s no need to overdo it with pumps, by the way, just enough to lift a small flow is ideal. Too much doesn’t look spectacular, it just looks wrong, and empties the feature through splashing.
If you can drill into walls, then climbers are a good way to add interest without losing ground space. Stainless steel wire can look good strung between supporting bolts. An exposed North or West facing wall will get very hot and will need some sort of cover until the climber can cover it – maybe a wooden lattice.
Finally, the choice of plants. In Sydney we are lucky that the range of what will work beautifully is extensive. Tropical style is good for fully walled areas, Japanese with azaleas, bamboo, maybe a conifer, for a shaded courtyard, or a dry Mediterranean or succulent garden to suit outdoor entertaining. I would usually avoid deciduous trees, as you’re looking at sticks for a good part of the year, it’s not if they can grow high and there’s not going to be other areas to carry the attention. Annuals too are hard to plan well, you’ve got bare pots sometimes and have to maintain the look. They are great though for instant fixes – colour for a party or whatever – but then you treat them like party decorations; pick them up cheap and don’t sweat over keeping them.