The Initial Proposal

The early concept for the balcony was developed with a co-design workshop in November 2024. Six local women joined a session on the designs for the balcony and explored what were the key issues for the design.

We used images of other gardens, vegetables and containers and asked the participants to develop their own garden proposals inspired by the ideas from the precedents. We then explored the type of plants and crops we should grow. The strongest feeling from the session was to create the a social space, to be allowed to be amongst the plants.

The workshop generated this vision for the balcony.

•The Balcony Garden will be an outdoor classroom for gardeners. It will be a place to teach the stages of how to grow with areas to teach propagation, fertilising, watering, growing on, repotting, pollination, ripening, harvesting.

•The Balcony will have tables and chairs and have a social function, a place to hang out

•The project will aim to be teach the principles of self-sufficiency and grow your own

•The garden will also demonstrate the power of garden activity and home-grown food for wellbeing and the benefits of vegetables and plants for our health.

The garden was then developed into a proposal for the grow space around the need for access and to create an outdoor classroom. See blog post on the Design: constraints & opportunities

The early general arrangement for the balcony - not to scale :-)