Before I sign off for the weekend, I wanted to share with you some inspiring ideas for decorating your garden. This month’s Better Home and Gardens has some lovely ideas for creating a relaxing nook in your garden. Don’t worry if you don’t live in a sprawling bungalow with a huge garden. With a little creativity you can create one in your balcony too.  I saw the fuchsia bench on BHG’s facebook page and fell in love with it. If you have a old cane chair, how about  painting it in this color.

Add a little drama to the setting with a water fountain or urn.

Isn’t this a perfect setting for a summer evening?

Image courtesy:

June 2011 images from Facebook page of Better Homes and Gardens and digital version.

Tending to balcony garden has been long overdue. I lost some plants this summer to pests including my favorite orange hibiscus which has flowered maniacally over the past two years. Sometimes, the white sticky pest you see on these plants come from the neighboring infected ones or there could be something wrong with the soil itself. In this case, it came from the adjacent white hibiscus.

It was a busy gardening day yesterday. Got half a dozen plants from the Jeevaa Bhima Nagar nursery. If you haven’t been in a while, it’s a good time to drop by as the nursery is well stocked with flowering plants, edible herbs and vegetables. I picked a 7-layered scented jasmine, large red hybrid hibiscus, Ixora red,  okra/ladies finger/bhindi, hilli, and tulsi. Repotted them myself so it was quite some task but loved every bit of it. Redecorating the balcony is in store over thenext few weeks. So stay tuned..meanwhile I leave you with images of the new plants..

See you Monday!

Image courtesy:

Chilli - (missyredboots)

Garlic Chives (slideshowmom)

Who doesn’t love a green, blooming balcony? There are hundreds of blogs that list tips and tricks to bring the picture-perfect image to your balcony. But, we all know it takes a lot more than pictures to sow and harvest herbs on a windowsill.  I’ve just spent hours sifting through scores of urban gardening blogs to find a few that are helpful to novice gardeners.

My motive was to dig out blogs by urban Indian gardeners, but I was successful in finding only two that fit my criteria - frequency of updates, pictures,  and well-documented steps and conducive conditions for growing plants.

Geek Gardener - is replete with information on container gardening and various varieties of vegetables to grow in a particular month in India.  Despite the low frequency of posts, Geek Gardener is an excellent resource for growing vegetables in a tropical climate. Every post has pictures of plants at very stage from sowing to saplings and flowering to finally, harvesting the produce. The pictures are like a step-by-step guide for a novice gardener.

Zucchini

The Urban Gardener: Sunita’s obsession with greens is evident from her blog, The Urban Gardener. The site has a good mix of vegetables and flowering plants. I’m slightly biased towards sites with pictures as this is a hobby that is visually motivating. The Urban Gardener ranks high in the “good pictures” area.

Sunset: An unusual entry for a blog list. But what we do without this site and its encouraging how-tos. If you’ve not heard of Sunset magazine before, then I swear, you’ve missed something in life. Just kidding Stop reading and hop over to the site!

Life on the Balcony: I’ve saved the best for the last. Though Fern Richardson lives in southern California, there is a lot to learn from her blog for urban gardeners in India. A blog with a professional look, good categorization, easy navigability, and above all, frequently updated, makes it a must-have in your Reader.

Veggies to grow this season

If you are keen what the rest of the world grows through the year, here are a few of my favorites:

Japanese Gardener for the enticing look of veggies.

Singapore Plants Lover for the colourful flowers and novel containers

Totally Inept Balcony Gardener for the yellow lemons, blooms and creepers

If you have been reading a gardening blog for a while now and find it useful, please leave a link in the comments section for others to benefit.

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Zucchini - Geek Gardener

Veggies - Life on the Balcony