Dear Sibe,

I live in a flat and love watching all the garden shows but with only a small balcony, there's not much I can do plant-wise. What do you think about creating an indoor garden? I've seen examples of indoor hanging baskets and glass bottles with flowers and would love to recreate them, but how hard would it be?

I look forward to your advice.

Sammy

Our Gardening Expert replies::

Hello Sammy,

It's not particularly hard to create an indoor hanging basket. You do though, need to use appropriate plants - i.e. house plants.

Firstly, as far as the basket is concerned you will need one with a built-in drip tray, for obvious reasons! Trailing over the edge you could use Tradescantias and as a centre piece, maybe a Begonia Rex or Hoya. Coloured-leaved plants like Begonia Rex are useful as showy flowers but are hard to produce in such a situation. Alternatively, you could have a smaller hanging basket with just one plant - Spider Plant (Chlorophytum) which would look good.

Before getting your basket, make sure you have a secure mounting in the ceiling or fix a bracket firmly to your wall. Don't put this too high as watering could be difficult indoors and choose plants suited to the available light. For example, if you are using Pelargoniums and are expecting them to flower they really need to be near to a window. A few other suggestions: ivy, Begonia semperflorens and fuchsias.

As for a bottle garden, this is not as easy as it may seem. Firstly, you need quite a large container and then be sure to add a good 2in (5cm) layer of gravel at the base sprinkled with bits of charcoal before inserting compost. You need to do this in such a way as to keep the insides of the bottle clean, so make a long funnel to pour materials through. The compost should not be flat but should be built up at one side to make a mini landscape. Remember not to introduce too many plants. You may need to make your own tools - wiring a dessert fork to a stick to use for planting is one example which I have no doubt will come in very handy!

If you want it to look like a real landscape you need something of tree-like stature on the mound of soil and maybe a few small rocks for dramatic effect. A trailing plant to cover some of the foreground would also be useful - but don't use too many plants. Three to six should be enough depending on the size of your container. Don't, whatever you do, over water - usually the bottle has a stopper inserted (remove when condensation occurs) so there is little need to water again - keep it as dry as you can without allowing wilting.

There are many other ways you can grow plants indoors - you could buy a large container and use a mixture of house plants and there are lots of multi-type planters with several containers linked together which can look quite good.

Sibe.

For more on container and small-scale gardening, see Houseplant Heaven, Adding Colour to a Balcony, Armchair Gardening and Hanging On!

The above image is of a 'Tradescantia (Anderson Group) Isis' available from Crocus.