What would you put in it? Of course with all exercises there would have to be parameters. Should you choose to accept this Mission Impossible here is the brief. 1. There is an irrigation system. 2. Full sun with a south/southeast exposure. 3. 28 floors up. Will have to carry anything up the last two flights of stairs as the elevator doesn't go to the roof. 4. Downtown Vancouver. 5. Container is 19" deep, 10' wide and about 40' long. 6. Roots system should be shallow and non-invasive. 7. Landscaping committee, none of whom have much gardening experience, are leaning to rhododendrons as a feature. 8. The first year of planting you have $1500 to spend on this planter. More money will be forthcoming in following years for additional plants. There is another larger planter in the same area. Would you buy a few mature plants to attempt to make the area more cohesive? Attached are a few pictures for an idea on the area. As you can see this is a real project. Since these pictures were taken the soil has been returned to the container. The seal failed in the container and this caused the entire contents to be excavated. We lost all the plants and thought that replanting would be in early May but given the labour shortage in BC we were delayed until the heat of summer for the actual return of the soil to the container. We declined to plant anything at that time and right now there is little traffic to the rooftop so we can wait until the spring for planting. I'd like to build this right. We don't have much money and I hope to gather information and thoughts here. If anyone is interested I'd be happy to post additional pictures. If there is any other information that an armchair designer would need I'd be happy to supply it to the best of my information. I'll be honest. I posted this problem originally back in March in the Small Space Gardening thread but I didn't get a nibble. I've read a lot since then and visited many gardens but before I spend my strata's money I hoped I could get a second, or an eighth, opinion. Thanks.
Well, let's start with putting rhododendrons into perspective. Not usually good for a high wind/high sun/high heat, although there are a few rockery types and some speciality species types that could take those conditions, but that requires some research. Also, you refer to time of use. Clearly you don't much care what it looks like in winter. Evergreens are nice in part BECAUSE they look nice in winter. They also offer structure and definition, but overall if you don't need winter interest you can go with more seasonally interesting material. I'm also going to address the fantasy of the armchair designer - and please don't take this wrong; it's a forgivable fantasy. After all, with all those knowledgeable people out there who seem eager to share on the internet, why wouldn't such a beast exist? But if you go to the Gardenweb Landscape Design forum, you'll see that this sort of query comes up more often, and it doesn't ever generate a design on demand. This is because design is a lot of work, and most people are already busy enough with their own projects or, lo and behold, doing designs for people who pay them. What you will get on the internet for free is little nudges over places where you're stuck in the process of doing your own design. Here on the UBC forum, where most people are very botanically-minded, you might well get plant ideas. On GW, you might get the broad strokes of a look you'd like, or some key issues to consider, and maybe a few more plant ideas. In the end, if you want design done for you, you pretty much have to pay for it. The other thing for which an internet forum can help in that case is to help you formulate your expectations before you hire such a person. Either to form your vision, or to help you decide between hiring someone through a nursery, someone who is design and build, vs. someone who is design only. Apropos bringing other issues up for consideration, what is the maintenance plan? That should be factored into the design from day 1. And finally, is that budget only for plants or does it include labour and design? And since plants grow, I'm not clear why you'd need more money in future years to add more plants, unless that's for annuals, which are quite labour intensive. But gardening simply is labour intensive, especially in confined spaces. If you're working with perennials and shrubs, more likely you'd be taking some out as the years go by. Plus, they need pruning, dividing, and general grooming and weeding. Good luck. I hope your building's residents are diverse enough that you'll find you have a gardener in your midst.
One nice thing about azaleas, is that the plants can be reduced a lot if they outgrow their space - recovering very quickly and thickly. Trost birch? Flag stone or two? I like wintergreen quite a bit for small gardens too.
I'd like to thank KarinL and MD Vaden for your comments and suggestions. It is with horror that I realized far too late that I have a typo in the thread name but perhaps it will lead some to discover what kind of idiot question is being asked here. I thank you in particular Karin L for your thoughtful comments and I had hoped that by providing the bare essentials of information in the opening post there would be an opportunity for others to ask questions and make observations if they were so inspired. And I'm grateful for you MD Vaden for reminding me about azaleas. There are other areas of our garden that will be readily able to accept any enthusiastic growers. When I say design a garden perhaps that was a bad use of phrase. Certainly I'm not expecting anyone to lay out a complete plan for me but rather I was hoping that others might tell me what they had luck with in their own situations or what they wished now they could plant if they had the opportunity. I'm very pleased that you mentioned rhododendrons because I have been researching those and am specifically looking at R. yakushimanum. One strong reason for evergreens is of course the difficulty in removing garden debris. I think that that planter would be able to hold several of the larger varieties of rhododendrons which would act as the focal point of the scheme and over the years enable the planting of more shade loving plants as the garden itself matures. And once the garden matures I'd like to introduce more of the native plants of BC which are sorely absent in our current garden. Unfortunately in our building there is a complete lack of interest in gardening and volunteering of time so that the yearly call at our annual AGM brings no response from anyone to form a landscaping committee. So I decided to take the trowel and see what I can do myself.
