Start here: a five-step space brief
Twenty minutes with a tape measure and a notebook will save you more money than any buying guide. This is the brief we use before writing about a space, and it is the same one we would fill in before buying a pot for a balcony we had just moved into.
Write the answers down. A brief you can hand to a shop assistant, a landlord or a building manager is worth more than a folder of screenshots.
1. Find out what you are allowed to do
Rented flats, leasehold properties and buildings with a management company often restrict what can be fixed to walls, railings or the floor. Some prohibit anything on the balcony at all for fire-escape reasons. Ask before you plan, and keep the answer in writing if you can. This single step decides whether the rest of the brief is about wall-mounted systems or freestanding ones.
2. Measure the space you can really use
- The floor area you can reach without stepping over anything.
- Door swing and the width of the route from the door to the far corner.
- Height to the next obstruction — an open window, a washing line, a light fitting.
- Railing height, thickness and the gap between bars.
- The width of the corridor, lift or stairwell you will carry a bag of compost through.
Note what is behind the wall if you plan to drill, and what the floor is made of. A concrete balcony and a timber deck with a waterproof membrane underneath behave very differently under a row of wet containers.
3. Map the light through the day
Check at three points: mid-morning, early afternoon and late afternoon. Note which parts are in sun and for roughly how long. A balcony that faces one way at the front and another at the side is two different gardens. Reflected heat from a wall or window matters too — it can push a sheltered corner well past what the air temperature suggests.
4. Trace the water
Where does water come from, how far do you carry it, and where does it go when it drains? A watering can that holds nine litres weighs about nine kilograms when full. If the tap is two rooms away, that distance, not the plant list, will decide what you grow. Note whether the balcony drains freely, whether drips land on a neighbour below, and whether the building permits a hose connection.
5. Write down the weight question you cannot answer
We will not estimate the load a balcony can take; that is an engineering question about your specific building. Gather the facts you can — the manufacturer’s stated weight for the empty container, the volume of growing medium you intend to use, and the published limits on any bracket or railing system — and put the rest to your building manager, landlord or a structural engineer.
How to read a Leafumi guide
- “Checked” means we compared published specifications, manuals or support documents. It does not mean we handled the product.
- Prices are set by the retailer and change. We do not rehost or scrape them, and the price at checkout is the one that applies.
- Measurements come from the manufacturer unless the page says otherwise.
- Tradeoffs are described rather than scored. We do not publish star ratings or invented rankings.
- Corrections are made in the page itself and listed on the corrections page.
Where to go next
Once the brief is written, the four sections — planters, vertical gardening, container growing and watering and tools — each start from a different constraint. If you are unsure which applies, the planter section is usually the right first stop, because footprint and access constrain everything that follows.