how to create an urban garden

There is endless scope of creativity to be exposed within urban spaces. Whether you have a balcony, terrace or rooftop garden, there are so many innovative ideas out there to grow your favourite plants, alongside decorating and embellishing an otherwise concrete jungle. Let's look at some simple steps for how to create an urban garden.

Urban Gardens

For those creating an urban garden within city spaces, pots and containers are vital to bring colour, scent and nature into an often grey and neutral environment. With the increase of new builds and smaller garden spaces, there's still no limit to what you can achieve! You just have to plan and plant smart. For those with flower beds and borders, enrich the planting area with organic matter or compost to improve nourishment and drainage.

Be Creative!

Although some urban gardens are restricted by space, there is much scope to become creative with the ways in which we embellish our outside spaces. Whether that's sourcing and treating pallet wood to create your own seating, a container or even just somewhere to hang your plants. To make most of your space, vertical gardens might be your friend in an urban setting, from climbers to smaller plants in tilted pot constructions on your wall, there are no limits to what you can do. Not sure where to start choosing plants? Here are some of our favourite planting combos.

Planting Combos For Containers In Shade

Foliage is your friend here, but green is exciting! Explore different textures and even colours with the likes of Ferns, Heuchera, Vinca & Hosta plus floral delights such as Hellebores, Primula & Erysimum for winter & spring. For the summer months, there are many bedding plants that will allow for more of an explosion of colour, like Begonias, Bacopa Impatiens & Fuchsia, or perennials like Corydalis, Foxgloves and Trillium. If you have a larger container or need a focal point, you can still grow shrubs and trees! Consider researching smaller varieties of Acer, Viburnum and Prunus to name a few too.

Planting Combos For Containers In Sun

We've tackled shade, but now here are you sun loving plants! Still play with texture and form, grasses will be a fantastic choice here, smaller varieties like Stipa 'Ponytails' have a soft, warm bronze quality to them during the summer months, whilst Festuca 'Elijah Blue' keeping a compact form with unusual silvery blue foliage. Adding flowers are no issue here, you'll have a pick of perennials and summer bedding for you containers. If you still need inspiration here are our top picks: Erigeron karvinskianus, Lavender, Agapanthus, Pelargoniums, Calibrachoa, Lobelia, Osteospermum.

Fillers, Thrillers and Spillers

Don't forget to play with HEIGHT when planting, general rule of thumb, tall to the back, and trailing or low growing towards the front. Just remember, whilst having extremely instant, full containers looks fab, it doesn't give the plants room to grow over time, plan the spacing where possible. It's not as much of an issue with summer bedding, but even then, the more crammed in the plants are the more they will need watering and so on.

Another way to remember is this: THRILLERS - larger, showy plants toward the back/middle, FILLERS - medium height plants, with fuller foliage or flower to help fill gaps and SPILLERS - Cascading and soft flowing plants toward the front of your container.

It's Not All About Containers

You might be blessed with plenty of space in your borders, you can still use the planting combos we've suggested, before planting, remember to check your soil type, add organic matter if you need to aid breaking up clay for example. Ultimately, plan before you plant! Consider how you may 'zone' spaces, instead of simply have one straight path down the centre of the garden, walk around, see where you'd naturally start the morning with a coffee, where the sun hits during the day, do you want to add any structures (like a shed and greenhouse) the natural flow of a garden is almost as important as the plants themselves!.

Is There Space For Fruit & Veg?

Edible gardening is fast becoming a popular way to enjoy gardens, often combining edibles and ornamentals fir 'Edimental' planting schemes. This is excellent for urban garden, there's always space for smaller cropping plants like dwarf beans, lettuce, spinach, patio tomatoes & fruit, you'll be surprised to find out you've probably got space to even house a small fruit tree! (Just remember to look at the 'rootstock' to best advise on the size your tree will grow.)

Urban Garden Shows

We hope this helps as a starting point, if you're still seeking inspiration, did you know, the RHS held their FIRST Urban Garden Show in Manchester in 2024, this could be a great opportunity to seek out beautiful and creative uses of space, fingers crossed they announce another show!