Terrace gardening encompasses both gardening and landscaping skills, requiring an eye for design if you want a really stunning looking terrace. Most people outsource the terrace garden work to landscape design companies, but to really ensure that you get what you envisioned as your terrace garden, why don’t you grow it yourself? For the DIY approach, here are some tips for consideration.

The first thing that you need to consider if you want to create your own terrace garden is the viability of your terrace. It has to be sturdy enough to support the weight of the media, the material design, and of course the growing plants. You don’t want to compromise the integrity of the building. If you’re not sure how much load your terrace can support, ask your engineer friends about it; they can estimate the load your terrace can support. It depends on the height and the material used for the built up area.

Terrace gardens often are:

• With soil as the base material or foundation, for the plants
• Housing potted plants, without soil being the foundation.

Soil obviously increases the weight of the terrace garden, and so is usually unsuitable for rooftop terrace gardening, unless it is sited on ground level. The best material to build up the terrace and hold the soil in, are bricks. Wooden walls run the risk of fungi, termites, powderpost bugs, or wood borer beetles, and are really only suitable for temporary outdoor terraces. If you plan for small terraces out in the garden, you can easily wall in a raised terrace using wooden plywood strips. Such terraces can be created for raised flower beds.

Now that you have a go signal to proceed with your plan, try to picture out how you want your terrace garden should look like. This helps to get a head start for your project. But know that when you have a lower terrace compared to your neighboring building, you want your garden to provide some kind of privacy for you. Using taller plants and dwarf trees can give this privacy. Some shrub species are Xylosma or Abelia. You also have to consider the size of your terrace. You don’t want to plant taller plants and heavy foliage when your terrace is limited in space.

Along with shrubs or dwarf trees, another way to screen the terrace is by addition of pergolas. Pergolas made of ceder and coated with exterior varnish are resistant to outdoor conditions for a long time. By adding a screening plant like Wisteria Sinensis, it performs just as well as any other shrub in shading your terrace from the sun and providing privacy.

As mentioned earlier, your terrace is best walled in with bricks. Waterproof your terrace by lining it with burnt bricks – not just brown bricks. Before you lay the bricks, be sure to wet your terrace well and observe how the water drains. They all need to drain towards the main drain pipe. Lay a very fine mesh over the bricks before you put in your planting media, which is your soil, in order for it not to seep into the cracks of your bricks defeating its draining purpose. Now you’re ready to place your soil, but soil tends to be heavy so that it’s advisable to use a mixture of soil, compost, and peat moss. In the case of totally soilless terraces, you only need to make sure the drainage works as it should. Collected, stagnant water can cause all kinds of problems.

When your media is ready, you can now plant your flowers and your trees in your terrace. You need to use plants that don’t have tap roots because they can grow deeper and can very well damage your terrace. Get ones that have fibrous roots. If you want to plant small trees in your terrace, be sure that the tap roots are bound or the tree is contained in a special container to restrict the growth of its tap roots. Try to have balance of flowering plants and foliage plants that will survive through winter to provide you with shades of green even during winter. Suitable plants or trees for terrace planting, are those with some hedging characteristics, or able to tolerate droughts, and are relatively small in size. Some species to consider are:

• Rosa eglanteria
• Abelia grandifolia
• Buxus species
• Olive species
• Wisteria sinensis
• Juniperus (shrub types)
• Date palms
• Ligustrum jonandrum

What if you only have a tight balcony instead of a spacious terrace? Don’t worry because you can still have your mini garden in your balcony so long as it can support the weight that you’ll be adding to it. There are gardening boxes you can get from gardening shops in which you can hang along the rails of your balcony and plant flowers in them. Arrange short flowering plants in the center of these boxes and plant hanging foliage along the edges to create the illusion of variety and space. You can also slot in small rocks to create an exquisite rock garden right within your terrace.

No matter how big or small your terrace or your balcony is; you can still create your own garden sanctuary in it. You just need to compensate space with your creativity and you definitely turn a small terrace into a very unique one.

Contrary to popular opinion, hillsides can make good gardening land, and it pays to landscape them, if you are living in hill country or just have a little hill on which your home stands. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon is an example of simulating an ornate hill or mountain, upon which luscious gardens grew. Clearly, the ancient peoples thought nothing of landscaping hills, which were very normal landscaping concepts to them.

Here are some hillside landscaping ideas and tips.

The gradient of the hillside

The gradient of the hillside matters a lot in landscaping it. Gradient determines how much you can feasibly modify, if you’re working on it solely in a personal capacity. If the gradient is too steep (excess of 30 degree angles), you may need to consult professional landscape designers. Does walking up the hillside equivalent to a strenuous workout? If yes, then you’d be better off leaving it to landscaping experts who will have the equipment to reduce the gradient, and dig the earth up.

Terraces are so classic (and sound)

What sort of climate are you living in? If it’s rainy, then you could consider digging terraces to minimize soil erosion. If it’s arid, terraces serve a rather more different purpose, namely to “civilize” the terrain. Terraces can be paved with rocks or gravel, and cemented together to overlook a prospect. Most Mediterranean styles incorporate terracing into their hillside landscaping designs, just look at the styles of the Sicilian, Italian, Spanish, and Greek landscaping creed to obtain a better idea.

Suitable plants

Evaluate the soil of the hillside. Is it arid, or mildly dry? Almost every hillside has dry soil because the water runs off down the hill; so be sure to choose plants that can live without demanding water requirements, or better still, tolerant of short droughts. The soil of hillsides are often poor as a result of leeching of nutrients, and rocky outcrops may predominate in certain locations, so be prepared to buy better topsoil to compensate for it. Some suitable drought resistant species include:

Trees – Poplar (Populus tremula) , Pagoda Tree (Sophora japonica), Eucalyptus (E. pauciflora, E. nicholii)

Shrubs – Golden Showers (Genista tenera), Bush Clover (Lespedeza thunbergii), Sage (S. officinalis, S. fulgans), Yucca (Y. gloriosa).

Perennial herbs – Geranium (G. endressii), Ostespermum species, Monkey Grass (L. spicata), Spurges (Euphorbia).

Bushes are best for hillside landscaping, since they are hardy, and don’t require a lot of water. The smaller the plant, the less water it needs. The kinds of bushes that might be good for hillside gardening are those that grow more vertically as opposed to horizontally. It’s useful to bear these things in mind when thinking of some hillside landscaping ideas.

Patterns

After selecting the suitable plants that you want to plant, you’d also need to determine a suitable pattern for the plots on which to grow them. The area for the plots are usually square or rectangular in shape. Plots give order to any hillslope and instantly points them out as being “landscaped,” even to non gardeners.

The bushes can be placed in a linear pattern, or they could be equally spaced, so that the inside zones look like a checkerboard. Spiral patterns are less commonly seen and in my opinion, not really suitable for hillside landscaping because they look haphazard from afar. The best hillside landscaping ideas involve demure, and blended design concepts that do not scream for attention, yet are noticeable from far and near.

Before you start your search for the right landscape plants, consider how the plants would fit into the overall design of the landscape itself..

A good way to pre-plan your landscape gardening is to get hold of some free landscape design software. There’s a good one here. You could also purchase 3D garden landscape software that will help in visualizing your landscaping plans, before you even begin, saving you costs, time, and mistakes. These software always include the central element – the landscaping plants.

Four considerations when choosing landscaping plants are:

1. Aesthetic purposes
2. Privacy purposes
3. Suitability in creating mini habitats for garden wildlife; ecological purposes
4. Ability to grow in your climate

Landscaping plants come in a variety of species and types, you would never imagine that some of the best landscaping plants are in fact, the normal unassuming types which you would never have guessed. For aesthetic purposes, did you know the sage is good for that? The common garden sage is great for borders and herb gardens; if you don’t believe it, try planting them as a border around your herb bed. You’ll find their lavender colored flowers do well in creating a well balanced frame that is neither visually too strong, nor too weak.

For climate suitability, remember there are annuals and perennials, subtropicals, and full fledged tropicals. An annual landscaping plant will need to be bought and purchased anew each year whereas perennials grow back each year by themselves. Tulips, which are perennials, will double in number, annually, if left by themselves.

When you are looking for a landscaping plant, remember what time of the year it is. If your climate is seasonal, then you’ll need to modify your shopping according to the season. You cannot usually go into a gardening store looking for a landscaping plant in the middle of winter and find a summer bloom.

For privacy, consider the ivy plants; although there are a few negative opinions about ivy because of their smothering habit, they are almost synonymous with English gardens, and are splendid for cloaking gazebos, walls, fences, and arches. The ivy is hardy, and thrives in climates with milder winters, requiring only a supporting structure to climb up.

The only drawback of growing ivy, is that they grow all by themselves. Vigorously. Ivy plants can grow several inches longer overnight! So, as mentioned earlier they tend to smother an entire structure, wall, or tree, on which they are growing.

Flowers as landscaping plants

You can use flowers as landscaping plants, but the only suitable kinds for seasonal temperate climes are hardy flowering kinds like Impatiens or Chrysanthemums. Tropical flowers are beautiful no doubt, but are meant for indoors mostly. Remember that tropical flowers sold in garden stores can only be placed outdoors provided your climate is only mildly seasonal all year round.

If you’re really short of time and money, you could try searching for the right landscape plant online, although there aren’t really many databases freely available. There is a landscape plant guide at the University of Minnesota’s Landscape Plant Guide. The web version provides descriptions of many kinds of landscape-suitable plants. Happy hunting!