Paul GarganGreen Fingers
If life was fair and all was equal we would all have a large garden to do with as we pleased, but it’s not and we don’t. Still, that doesn’t mean you can’t grow plants and surround yourself with greenery.
If you have a small paved area (a courtyard), then you have endless possibilities. Container gardening is as old as gardening itself. Don’t limit yourself just to summer bedding. Make use of what you have all year round.
Shrubs can give you year round colour and under these, given a container big enough, you can under plant bedding. Shrubs suitable for container gardening include a wide range of Japanese maples, skimmia, pieris, fuchsia, rhododendron, hydrangea, cordyline, acuba, phormium, fatsia and camellia.
Pots
If your courtyard is south facing you can grow fruit. Apples, pears, cherry, plum, pear and peach can all be grown in pots, but there is a catch. They must be grown on a M27 rootstock. Ask the person you are buying it from, if they are not sure or don’t know, walk away. This is a dwarfing rootstock which will only let the main trunk grow to 60-90cm high.
Blueberries, gooseberries, raspberries and strawberries also do very well grown in containers. Any pot, tub or trough which is deeper than 20cm can be used or simply use a grow bag.
They can be mixed with bedding as some are very decorative in their own right such as cherry tomatoes, runner beans, ruby chard and the feathery leaves of carrots.
A number of tender veg that can suffer in an open garden are more suited to be grown in a warm sheltered container such as aubergine, cucumber, capsicum and tomato. Some neat salad crops can be crowded into a small space in grow bags providing fresh veg without a garden, such as radish, onion, lettuce, and of course potatoes will happily grow anywhere in a tub.
Courtyard
For most of these fruit and veg you don’t even need a courtyard, a balcony or even a door step will do. If, however, you are restricted to growing indoors you still have options. Herbs can be grown individually in small pots on windowsills. It creates an attractive surround for them and produces a unified display. A few to choose from are chervil, chives, parsley, pot marjoram, sweet basil, thyme, rosemary and savory.
Houseplants are something no one should be without. There is an endless list to choose from, so it is best to ask the advice of whoever you are buying from. Describe the room it is for, regarding sunlight, temperature etc.
In the 1980s NASA discovered that plants such as devil’s ivy, aloe, spider plant, common ivy and peace lily were extremely effective in removing pollutants from the air.