bxl0608 8 Project Terrific Terrace 2010

The view from my Terrific Terrace

As a garden photographer, you would think I’d have an amazing garden. Unfortunately I didn’t inherit nearly enough of my Mom and Grand-parents’ green thumbs. I hate mowing, weeding and dealing with pests. I’d much rather spend time admiring plants through the end of my macro lens.

That said, I LOVE my terrace. Yes it’s tiny and crowded but I think (though I may be slightly biased) that I have one of the best views in the centre of Brussels. My goal this year, Belgian weather permitting (and boy has she been permitting these past few weeks) is to spend more of my work day on my terrace.

In order to make this dream a reality, my most important purchase was a huge umbrella to shade me and my laptop from the sun. Then all I needed to do was initiate Project Terrific Terrace 2010!Luckily, container gardening is pretty affordable in the low-lands. On my recent trip to the Netherlands I went to my favourite garden centre and I loaded the Prius to the brim with plants and pots for my project.

My goal was to find a good balance between beautiful flowers and useful culinary herbs and I think I achieved that goal.

For herbs I have:

  • chives
  • regular and lemon thyme
  • large leaf and variegated purple sage
  • marjoram
  • regular and apple mint (mojitos anyone?)
  • lemon balm
  • rosemary
  • bay laurel

My flower garden consists of:

  • Pansies (also edible)
  • 2 kinds of lavender (one of which is also edible)
  • a deep red clematis (to replace my deceased passionflower)
  • A wisteria
  • an ice plant garden with 9 different varieties
  • a columbine
  • a small azalea

Andrew also decided to get in on the action with two tomato plants and some strawberries. I added a Spanish pepper plant and I hope to start some more tomato seedlings later in the spring.

The other thing I’m hoping will help make my terrace terrific is the compost box I started recently. I was feeling guilty at all of the peelings etc we were wasting from our veg boxes. Friends of ours showed us their terrific terrace and told us how to compost in a small space. They even donated some of their worms to get us started. So far it’s working great and there’s no smell (knocking furiously on wood).

So have a wander around my terrific terrace. Click on the thumbnails to view the whole photo and read the captions.

This is one of what I hope will be many CheeseWeb posts I wrote on my terrace. I plan to keep you posted on Project Terrific Terrace. Let’s see if I can manage to keep everything alive!