Apartment living can be restricting. It’s usually a small space, with no garden. Don’t despair though, there is nearly always some way of adding greenery. Most apartments will have a balcony or perhaps even a shared patio/space. These are ideal for pots. Pots are neat, self-contained and easy to look after. In this post, I’ll describe how I used some second hand water rills to plant up grasses which I put out on my apartment patio.

For my garden in Bloom 2008, I wanted to mix many different materials, just to demonstrate how they could be used together. One of those materials was water. I had three metal rills custom made. These were painted black, sunk into the ground and filled with water. The effect, seen below,  worked out quite well !(if I do say so myself)

Bloom 2008 water rill

After the show, I was left with these rather bulky metal objects. I was able to sell one for scrap and the others remained in storage for two years. During that time, I moved into an apartment, with a patio. I also put in another garden for Bloom 2010 and again ended up with leftovers. In this case it was  a large number of grasses after the show. I decided I would re-use the metal rills as planters for the grasses on my patio. After lugging the rills over to the apartment, I had to make them suitable for planting. Whereas once they were watertight, they now needed to be able to drain!

Holes drilled into the rill

The first step was to drill holes in the rills to allow excess water to drain. No drainage means the plant would simply drown with no oxygen able to get to the roots. In addition to this, it is a good idea to put some detritus into the planter which create air pockets. This again allows for water to flow easier and prevent damage to the plants.

Improving drainage

With that initial preparation done, it’s time to fill the planter up with soil. A combination of multipurpose compost and John Innes No. 3 does the job nicely.

Multipurpose compost, John Innes No.3 and Gravel

The gravel will be place on top of the soil when done. It helps prevents weeds, prevents moisture loss and also looks quite nice! With the planter full of soil, it’s time to attend to the plants. The particular grasses used were Leymus arenarius. The grasses were unfortunately left in their pots for quite a while before I was able to get around to planting them. This meant there was a fair bit of dead growth which needed to be pruned away.

Grasses before pruning

Grasses after pruning

With the grasses pruned, they are ready to be planted up! I placed them, still potted, in the rill, just to line them up and figure out how to space them. I then started to take them from their pots and plant them up. The roots of these particular grasses are very thick, they help the plants to spread like wildfire.  These grasses can be invasive, so they are nearly better in pots, to contain their spread.

Thick roots!

The plants are all planted in the rill. The final step is to add the gravel on top and all done. Well, almost. When gravel comes in a bag it tends to be very mucky so needs a good rinse. I used a spare bin here to hold them as I hosed them down.

Rinsing gravel

Now we are finally done. The gravel is placed on the rill and the finished product is watered and complete.

Watering the completed product

With the two rills now planted up and some additional pots, the otherwise drab patio comes to life.

The complete patio

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