Deck Gardening

Gardening on decks  has made a comeback that rivals the comebacks of Brett Favre, George Foreman or Evander Holyfield.  The new “green” movement, combined with the 100-mile diet has stimulated backyarders and urban farmers to rejuvenate their green space into black and green (as in soil and veggies).

But the new gardening enthusiasm has opened myriad new prospects for petunias and venues for veggies.  Across urban North America, rooftops are blooming with flowers, glowing with grass and topped with trees, as green roof technologies offer an assortment of benefits.  Indoor gardens, hydroponics and soilless systems grace countertops and coffee tables.  Even patios, verandas and decks relinquish space to pots and planters of all sorts.

This gardening phenomenon (don’t call it a craze!) offers even more opportunity for avid green-spacers.  Built-in growing stations – larger than pots, and with watering or light-guiding systems – are found on deck edges and parapets of balconies.  One of the most novel approaches is to design eco-friendly fences with recesses and alcoves for favourite flowers or fruit bushes. 

More than decorative, these planting spots add a chance to include fresh fruits and vegetables to your city diet, fresh from your own city farm. 

Some of these planters have been incorporated into wooden fences, offering a break from the visual straight-line perspective that conventional walled fences present.  Others have been built into stone retaining walls, or dry-stack fencing.  Still more fit nicely into cinder-block or split rail fences.  Indeed, planters constructed into fence lines can be included in any material system, from wood to PVC. 

Planters that have been included in the integrity of a fence also may add stability, offering reinforcement against wind load, and a solid footing for longer lines of continuous-run fencing.

But garden fences offer the ability to combine a variety of fence styles and materials in one run.  Simply by including climbing vines, like clematis, grapes, hops or scarlet runner, the galvanized chain link fence, open horizontal board fence or even split rail fence is provided with a decorative façade that hides the plainness of these materials.

Constructing these fences, though, requires a professional touch and a personal flair for eye appeal.  For this reason, homeowners are urged to work with a quality fence builder, to ensure that their dreams and mental images are realized in the final design.

While the days of back lot vegetable gardens are not likely to return to the prominence that they had in the 1940s, the new gardener sees significantly more options and avenues to explore his own inner gardener.  And fences, no longer, are a barrier to garden growth!