Garden Makeover

Rusty garden table

A smart approach is to start your garden with a theme in mind. This way you can plan ahead for appropriate pots, plants and decoration. After all you want a practical garden that has visual impact and good looks.

For starters, think if you want an edible or an ornamental garden. Our recommendation is a combination of both where you can have fresh ingredients for cooking, and color, texture, and visual impact with ornamentals. Remember to take into consideration your space size and environmental conditions such as the hours of available sun and wind. As a good rule of thumb herbs require at least 6 hours of sunlight while flowers and other ornamentals may require less.

Before the makeover

When we started our garden we didn't have a theme in mind. Actually this whole gardening madness started because I like to cook and I wanted a windowsill garden for a few herbs. (I'm actually helping a friend create hers, keep tuned for this upcoming interesting post.) Turns out our sweet basil grew so much we had to transfer it to a large pot and so our balcony garden started. In the beginning it was mostly the pots we could get, all placed across the balcony floor. (Editor's note: Not the best floor plan for a garden.) 

There is an excellent gardening book which has a lot of information on the different plants that could be appropriate for containers: The Encyclopedia of Container Plants. The author, Ray Rogers, has won numerous awards for plant displays and flower shows, so the book presents lots of ideas about the different combinations you can do based on the shape of the leaves, and the color of the plants and flowers. We have learned about the best combinations and decided to experiment a little (yes, always leave some space/time for experimentation).

It was time for a garden makeover! We went shopping and found some interesting pots and colorful garden tables. After pondering for a while (Editor's note: "a while" = hours) we settled on a rusty theme, which will prove to be very convenient in Puerto Rico's high humidity. We selected several rusty metal tables but incorporated a few wooden pieces and pots that also have rusty accents. 

Color palette is important too. You can use a color wheel to decide on good combinations. Play with analogous colors, which will prove very useful for edible leaves or maybe mix and match complementary colors using your flowers. For our new pots and tables we selected colors that are not too bright but which include white, yellow and some blue and purple. Since most of our plants are just green, we wanted to add some color without overcasting our flowers.

There are also other ideas you can incorporate into your garden. One of our favorites is creating theme pots. You can create a pot that is all about salad, mixing and matching different edible greens like arugula, lettuce, scallions. Combine aromatic plants like basil, parsley, lemongrass and rosemary for a more romantic touch.

After the makeover

As you can see in the picture above, the change is not over-dramatic, but it does add great touches, it looks more organized, it has more shape and depth, it displays better the smaller plants as they don't disappear into larger ones. Every once in a while we rearrange them either because plants achieve their their lifespan or because we get new plants always taking into consideration shapes and color.

We will keep improving our garden and as always, keep you posted. We might start introducing some trees to our garden arrangement. Don't miss the updates.