Small Balcony Ideas

I have a really small balcony (1m x 4m) which faces north and it’s lovely to sit with a cup of coffee, read the paper or munch on a piece of toast in the morning sunshine – if only I could fit! No matter how many different ways I have tried to organise that balcony, it has been a constant decorating challenge. Small tables and chairs always over-crowd the space making it impractical to move around and walk down to the yard - until I discovered the Hanging Balcony Table.

It looked pretty ridiculous online, but for $59.95 it was worth giving it a try.When it arrived, it was a little larger than I thought and solved the problem perfectly. Coupled with a bench seat from IKEA and these cute little pink and scarlet outdoor cushions, I have the perfect place to sit in the mornings to watch the birds and enjoy the sunshine.

Being a rented apartment I am sort of limited to what I can do, but I’m not 100% happy with it yet. While I have the furniture in position, the next step is to add some plants which I will also hang from the balcony and perhaps some wood deck tiles like these (about $15 - $25 per tile) – to make it a little more modern;

Here are a few other small balcony ideas I have uncovered while researching my own little project… Urban Balcony has some great furniture ideas including these ones for small spaces:

Burkes Backyard featured a small balcony makeover one episode including converting aluminium toolboxes into bench seats that also double as storage. I’m not too keen on the look personally, but I was originally thinking of having a piece of furniture custom made to fit in this space which could act as a kind of small daybed and storage box at the same time. They also featured another balcony makeover which looks much better including custom designs furniture and wooden deck tiles.

Check out the 10 Inspiring Small Space Balcony Gardens article on Apartment Therapy:

Doityourself website has a good article on how to dress up a small balcony and turn it into a lovely garden.

As does eHow with some nice ideas including lanterns – I hadn’t thought of that, but I think it would look good with a few candles on my balcony too.

Lots of small balcony ideas on this US website thefind.com.

And of course, IKEA has some good ides with stools and benches (where I purchased my Norden bench) but I didn’t want stackable furniture for myself as I think it clutters up a small space and also is a bit of a hassle.

And now for something just a little bit different – what about the Bloomframe shown here on the likecool website – a window which opens to a balcony – created in the Netherlands by architects Hofman Dujardin now no longer just a prototype…

Make your own Green Wall

Ever since I saw a show Botanist, artist and creator of the Vertical Garden, Patrick Blanc on TV I have been fascinated by green walls, vertical gardens, green roofs, living walls – whatever you like to call them. Patrick Blanc the original inventor of the vertical garden was here in Sydney this month launching his new and tallest project Treo on a residential building in preparation for his other more ambitious green wall project in Australia.

Generally, I struggle to keep anything alive myself (no natural green thumb), but the thought of being able to grow your herbs on the kitchen wall, create a green space in a store or hotel or commercial property, adds a really earthy mood to an otherwise sterile or blank surface and can apparently boost productivity by 12%! My Cloudland post urged me to further investigate green walls and write a post on the topic:

General Pants - Melbourne

Accenture – Pyrmont by the Greenwall Company

Gazebo Wine Bar – the first green wall built in Australia by Ed Wharburton from Greenwall Australia.

Apparently they cost between $900 - $1800 per metre to have them custom made which sounds a little on the high end – I read somwehere the Gazebo Greenwall estimated to have cost around $23,000 – probably not everyone’s budget. 3-4 story high walls could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

OK – lets start small, ELT, a US based sustainable garden company has DIY kits for as low as US$395. The ones I like best are from gro-wall and they are sold by Lushe for around $250 per kit. These look simplest to me.

HOW TO BUILD YOUR OWN GREENWALL??

Watch this video of a guy from NY building his own:

Just to make it clear, I am NO gardening expert and have never done this before. I spoke to my mate Damon who is a commercial landscaper for Coordinated Landscapes and he reckons as long you you find a DIY type product it is doable. They use a company called Elmich but he thinks they might be a little expensive  but check out this video, makes it sound like quite a DIY system. The main thing he says is to get the irrigation right – especially if it is a north facing garden because there is not a lot of soil in a green wall and it doesn’t stay as moist as the garden. He reckons you can get cheap irrigation products from Bunnings and set that bit up quite easily perhaps with a tray at the bottom to collect the water and a small pump to move the water up. Also, food and plants can be mixed together eg. strawberries, herbs, tomatoes etc.

Here is some great information to help you create your own if you are brave enough to give it a whirl!

Check out this video.

Read a lot of information on the topic eg. Lushe Urban Gardening has some good DIY info and ideas for green walls, Gardening Tips tries to improvise, check out how Nick in NY made one on his apartment wall and other posts.

Other interesting posts: Inhabitat Green Roofs,  Read this SMH article, Green Roofs Australia, ELT.

I would love to create my own but will need some help (hopefully Damon will give me a hand) and if we go down this path I’ll be sure to blog my progress. In the meantime, if you want a quick and easy version, why not this crazy idea?

If anyone has created their own green wall I would love to hear about how easy/hard it was and how you went about it.

Friday Feature - Coolest Apartment on Earth

Could you live here? I came across environmental grafitti recently and I loved this post. So I decided that every Friday I am going to find and feature a new apartment that competes in the coolest/ wierdest/ most amazing place to live stakes. It will be my own "Coolest Apartment on Earth" listing. I hope you like it.

So for crazy apartment #1, lets look at the wilde featured on Friedensreich Hundertwasser's "Waldspirale" ("Forest Spiral") apartment block.

There is something very Antonio Gaudi about it (my favourite architect of ALL TIME of course) which is probably why I like it. Some of the things that make it special - those crazy onion shaped domes, apparently no wall is straight (very Gaudi), quite organic - very Art Noveau. But the bit I like best is the roof garden. Today it would be called an 'eco-roof' or a 'green roof'. It not only provides a great aesthetic but also can we used for energy production and food production. Check out these 8 incredible green roofs!! That brings me onto one of my other favourite topics of wall gardens - but I digress.

There are 105 glorious apartments in this structure which winds its way like a spiral. Aparently there is a landscaped courtyard in the centre with a running stream. Up in the turret at the southeast corner, there is a restaurant, including a cocktail bar! You'd never need to leave home? The building was constructed from 1998 - 2000.

So how would I rate this building

* Innovation = 8

* Eco-friendly = 9

* Facilities = 6

* Aesthetic = 5 (its a little ugly by my standards outside - would like to see inside)

* Cool Factor = 5.

* Total score = 33/50.

Could I live here? Maybe if it wasn't in Darmstadt Germany!!