孟买阳台花园改造

A Balcony Garden In Mumbai: Terrace Reveal

We’re finally here with our balcony garden reveal. I know it’s been really long, but we had to wait for the plants to settle in and grow. We started getting the new plant babies in the middle of last year. But posting pics of empty pots with a few leaves in wouldn’t have done justice to our balcony garden. The plants are bigger and fuller now and our garden is beginning to look a little wild like we wanted it to. So let’s get straight to it.

The Plan:

As always, we’ll start with the plan, which is simple enough. It is a long terrace, so we decided to keep the seating on one side. The look we wanted to achieve was that of an unkempt jungle, as opposed to a manicured garden.

I shared lots of inspiration images and details of how we were planning to go about it in our last post. You can read it in case you missed it. We did follow most of what we had planned, though there are always minor changes when you actually start working in a particular space.

A Balcony Garden In a Mumbai Highrise

As you can see in the plan, the seating is to the right of the balcony as you enter it. We’ve got an eclectic mix of furniture here, again to avoid the manicured look. That lovely red bench is my favourite piece of furniture here and we sourced it during our furniture shopping trip to Delhi. The marble top centre table is from Delhi too. We sourced the cane chairs at a local furniture shop in Mumbai.

The Ceiling:

I didn’t want to fill up the entire floor space with plants. That gives very little room for movement in a narrow balcony. And yet we wanted the wild jungle look. The obvious thing to do then, is to suspend the plants from the ceiling.

For the longest time, I couldn’t decide how to do that. Should I put hooks every 1 foot so that I can then keep changing the plants around as required? I would need hooks for the light fittings too.

And then I saw this grill work in a photograph of an outdoor nursery. I immediately had my solution. We’ve installed a wrought iron grid about 3 inches below the ceiling and painted it a white to match it. It gives us complete flexibility with where we want to hang our plants and lights. The plants are changed around almost on a weekly basis to make sure they are all getting enough sunlight.

We have plants and lights suspended from almost everywhere on the left of the balcony too. We have some creepers starting all the way down which have finally reached the grill and are gradually weaving their way into it. Over time we hope to have a thicker green cover on top.

The Walls Of The Balcony Garden:

Once the floor and ceiling has been taken care of, the only space left are the walls. Since we were looking for a lush, green space, we wanted to use these well too. We went ahead with the wall planter which we had mentioned in our previous post. We have some vines hanging off from the upper shelves, some creepers growing upwards from the lower shelves and space for candles and tea light holders too. (Those large round pots hold tea lights in them). This plants will hopefully get thicker and greener over time, but our little balcony garden is on its way.

On the opposite side we did a mini gallery wall with some masks and baskets to hold plants.

The Floor:

It’s not like we haven’t used the floor space at all. The right is almost completely taken up by the seating arrangement. So we intentionally left the left side empty, to give it a feeling of openness.

It gives you space to step into the balcony and walk around and enough space to easily add another pair of chairs with a small table when entertaining. Since the left side is otherwise unoccupied, we have place here for some floor plants… and this Buddha is a favourite.

Furnishings: I loved the red bench as is, but sitting on it was not entirely comfortable. It definitely needed some cushioning. Since the furniture was an eclectic mix, we decided to go with bright and boho with the furnishings too. I found these beautiful Suzani cushion covers on Amazon. But I wasn’t quite sure what to do for the bench seat. I wanted something patterned and colourful and coordinated with the cane chair cushions too.

Eventually, what I did, was to order a multicoloured bedcover online. We used the thick border for the bench seat cushion and the body of the bedcover for the cushions on the cane chairs. The cane chair cushion pads I found ready online while my local tailor helped me with the cushion pad on the bench.

The most important thing which was mentioned in the before post and you can’t yet see here, are trees. Well, we do already have them, but they aren’t trees yet. My favourite is a fiddle leaf fig which had about 4 leaves on it when it came. It is about 3 feet tall now… but still has a long way to go before we can call it a tree!

On the central column of the balcony too, it looks like we have Areca palm on both sides of the column. But the palm to the right is a variety which will grow into one of those 7 foot tall palms, and it is on it’s way.

The Night View:

With Moroccan lamps on one side and hand painted lamp shades on the other, the balcony garden is a pretty sight at night.

Before & After:

We have to have some before-and-afters before we end a reveal. Here’s a complete view of the balcony garden.

Before

After The right side of the balcony.

Before

And here is the left.

Before

After This is the central column.

Before

After I hope liked our little garden. If you did and would like to get any of it for yourself, then the next section is for you.

Get The Look:

The red bench and marble centre table are from Amar Colony in Delhi. You can read about our furniture shopping trip to Delhi. But we ordered a lot of the accessories online and I am providing links to them here.

Cane chair cushion pad

Leather lamp (We got ours at a handicraft exhibition, but similar is available here) | –

Moroccan lamp (We got ours at Dilli Haat in Delhi, but similar is available here) | –

Leather lamp (We got ours at a handicraft exhibition, but similar is available here) | –

Red railing planter which we used in our wall planter | –

White Suzani cushion cover

Yellow Suzani cushion cover

Round Suzani cushion cover

Dark Suzani cushion cover

Bedcover we used for bench and cane chair cushion covers |

That’s all from our garden in the sky for now. I’ve tried to present it as completely as I can, but there might be things I missed out. Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions in the comments below. I’d love to hear what you think of this boho balcony.