City Skills: how to garden when you don't have any ground

I love cities.

I love the richness and diversity, the buzz and energy, and the all-round opportunity they offer.

I also love that some of the most spectacular botanic gardens and popular public parks are also to be found in cities, a blessing for those us who choose to live and work there.

Sometimes though, having a park down the road, or across town, is not enough. Even with all the benefits that closeness and density bring, we still want to be able to look out and see plants outside our own window, or cut herbs or flowers from our own supply.

Here is a small collection showing how residents and business owners, community groups and even councils, seemingly without access to the ground, have carved out spaces for gardens. 

This building has a garden in every window.

Plants can run across, around and over these window boxes and frames. Even in a small space there is a variety of colour, texture and form.

In a busy New York street, a garden planter and seat are combined. Another skinny planter hugs the wall of the building behind.

This little park in San Francisco is built directly on top of a piece of unused road.  The planters are made from logs salvaged from Golden Gate Park, interspersed with panels of plywood.

The logs are simply propped, and support a thriving garden of diverse plant species.

The cut ends of the logs are painted bright acid yellow.

This tiny timber planter in Melbourne contains a little cluster of succulents.

These weathered steel planters in Auckland allow a garden to exist above an underground railway station.

Using plants that naturally spread beyond the dimensions of the planters themselves makes the garden seem bigger.

The planters also support climbing plants that are growing up timber screens.

In other places the planters themselves support tall timber trellis columns...

...allowing free-standing vertical gardens to act as markers and be visually engaging both with and without planting.

For those of you who are city-rich and land-poor, I hope these have been inspirational.

Thanks for reading, and see you soon for more from the wonderful world of gardens, landscape and design.