Filed under: Gardening, Flowers
Like any great room, a great garden needs to balance style and substance. Here, the spaces that do it right.
A balcony garden in Tribeca. Photo: Marie Viljoen
Remember to look up...
Poised above a busy New York street is this small wrought-iron balcony bursting with summer annuals, a sign of an apartment dweller who adores and needs flowers. Down below, one out of a dozen passersby looks up and smiles.
This urban garden reminds us that we need not over-analyze our plant choices. I can't identify every plant up there, apart from the obvious handful of sunny marigolds and a probable wisteria vine. But the spotlight in this aerie shines upon the fragrant heads of an often overlooked and overused flower: Petunia. Garden geeks may shun them as being too commonplace while new, wary, or by-rote gardeners buy them by the tray-load year in and year out, which makes the garden geeks sigh. But these flowers are hardy creatures. They're charming when planted with a keen eye for color, forgiving of neglect, and unexpectedly perfumed at night.