As many of you know, one of my great passions is creating, re-creating and tending to my container garden on my balcony.
Every year the garden is different than the one before and once planted the members of my potted community are continually changing.
Overall, I seem to increase the number of containers and because in the past two years I have begun incorporating more large plants, the space that the garden takes up on the balcony has really increased.
This year it looks like I can’t put my lounging chair out for a quiet afternoon read without moving a whole bunch of plants! The predominance of colors change from year to year, month to month as well.
Two weeks ago the garden had more yellow plants flowering than I have ever had before. I particularly love to use yellow orange, golden plants to contrast with pink, magenta, violet and blue blossoms. They really do not want to be in the garden this year as at least five different ones have perished!
I love to maintain the beauty of the plants by taking off the dead blooms ( dead- heading) and I do this as often as I can. I do not love my battles with large, small, green and/or brown caterpillars who hide themselves so perfectly in the stems and foliage of the plants.
Equally annoying are the white, green, or brown aphids who also love to munch away on my plants. Spider mites are miniscule red moving dots and this year a bright green grasshopper ate holes in the large leaves of one of my flowering maples. I’ve only seen one slug this year too.
But of all with whom I do battle my very least favorite foe are the white flies who love the stickiness of my petunias and who generally will go anywhere in my garden. They are the most difficult to extricate once ensconced!
Add to the mix the varying conditions of temperature, humidity, and the life spans of the anual plants, there is good reason why the garden always requires throwing out the dead plants and finding new ones to replace them.
This first slide show of seven pictures contains the newly revamped garden on July 17th.
In this next set of pictures ( which starts with the yellow with orange center exotic impatiens plant) which were taken August 1st you can already see the changes.
I hope that the two sets of pictures do not combine and that you enjoy my little piece of paradise!
Meryl Chodosh-Weiss 