A New Terrace: Part 1

We know that you need 3 basic things to grow plants, right? Soil, water and light. In an urban home, you might only have 1 or none of these things available to you in your outdoor space. So how do you go about creating your slice of green in a concrete jungle?

When we moved to our current flat in 2015, we were lucky enough to acquire with it, a 10 x 3m decked terrace which runs the length of the property. The one key feature of this space was that is was completely south-facing. So from mid-morning to mid-evening, it gets bathed in sunshine. It is un-shaded throughout the day which means our growing hours are long. This however, presented its own challenges, but we'll come back to that.

Step 1 - Getting the space ready

10 or so years of detritus and wet weather had taken its toll on the decking outside. I doubt it had ever been cleaned/treated as it passed between the tenants who occupied our home before we did.

We knew this was going to be a big job and there really was only one thing for it - pressure washing. This took a good couple of weekends in terms of scrubbing, jet spraying and then twice staining the length of the decking to get it to a reasonable condition. This won't be possible in all situations - for instance if you live above another property or you don't have a source of water.

You can get tap adapters and your kitchen tap pressure should be more than enough for a pressure washer, just don't run your washing machine at the same time maybe.

With that done we could begin to plan the garden.

Step 2 - Designing the layout

When faced with this completely exposed corridor of space I had two big challenges.

The first was creating a semblance of privacy. Being on the first floor, the terrace is overlooked by dozens of properties. It would be impossible to completely enclose ourselves in but still I wanted to do my best to create some visual-breaks along the length of the balustrade.

I then considered the far ends at each side of the terrace, shared with neighbouring properties. Adding to that exposed feeling, the partitions taper down to allow each to look into the other's space. We'd need to erect some kind of trellis so that we could provide that initial screening which could then be used to grow climbers against.

Next was our bedding/general growing space. The kind of planters you can buy in stores were not going to be of the kind of size that we really needed to make this space feel right. We we were going to need a mixture of purpose-built planters to section up the space.

Initial and badly scaled plan of a potential layout using a mixture of planters.

Perspective view of the length of the terrace with a mixture of planters.

There weren't many variations on this initial design. We had an instinct about how to use the space best which was to invest in long rectangular planters.

We managed to come across BR Garden on eBay whilst looking for planters.

They build pre-treated decking planters, pre-lined with landscape fabric (to keep the compost in and prevent the wood from rotting), in a range of sizes and finishes. They were really helpful with our order and I thought to be good value, so check them out if you are planning your own space.

We went for 4no. larger cubes which we intended for our tall visual-breaks, and 6no. longer planters for general planting. A couple of these were slightly taller/narrower which were for use against the trellis at either end of the terrace.

Step 3 - Making it happen

For such a big undertaking we had to acquire a suitably sized vehicle, renting a van for day so we could hit B&Q and our local garden nursery to grab our trellis, compost and larger plants. We went for bamboo for our big column-like plants. We knew these would be very robust and give us that instant greenery that we were sorely after.

We attached the trellis to the existing partitions using cable-ties. Being a leasehold we can't make any big changes to our space like installing trellis permanently. The cable-ties slip behind the brackets meaning they are neatly secured. I have to replace them every-so often. The planters in front of each of them means that if they are temporarily unsecured, the trellis has nowhere to move and won't damage any climbers which are anchored to them.

We were really lucky in that the trellis we found was perfectly proportioned to cover our partitions with barely a margin. This went a long way to enclosing our space and making it feel like ours, rather than everyone else's.

Step 4 - Preparing our compost

The good news when it comes to compost in a container garden is that you haven't got to deal with any geological issues to do with soil content, be it clay, sandy, loamy, chalky etc. Each type presents its own benefits and challenges. In our case, the soil is perfect - or is it?

The good thing with new compost is that it's relatively free of debris and packed with nutrients ready for your plants. The problem with it being so lovely and rich is that it lacks lots of components of regular soil which are important for a plant to be happy in the longer term.

We took several trips to B&Q and stocked up on the big industrial bags of peat free compost. Our car could handle 3 of the 125L bags which are about 45kg each. If it's possible to get compost delivered to you, I'd recommend it. 🥴

We also picked up lots of bags of pea gravel for a couple of quid each. We created a layer of gravel in the bottom of each of our planters of at least a couple of inches. This is really important as it enabled the planter to drain effectively, stopping any water logging and the potential for our plant's roots to rot.

This is an absolute must in any kind and size of container be it a pot, tub, trough etc. This can be done with gravel which I'd recommend for containers like ours, or you could use crocks (aka bits of broken pots or another aggregate), anything that allows the water to run away. We also mixed gravel into our compost generally, creating further opportunity for drainage throughout the soil.

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At this point we're ready to go and splurge at the garden centre and begin filling our space with beautiful new plants. In Part 2, we look at choosing our plants, making sure they will thrive in our space, and then how best to look after them.