John Eskandari found the perfect home when he saw the third-floor Rogers Park apartment, with its early-1900s details, generous windows and, in particular, the brick porch.
Problem was, somebody else was preparing to rent the space. Eskandari wanted that porch: he persuaded the tenant-to-be to take another flat in the same building.
“He didn’t care,” Eskandari said with a laugh. “I was looking for something with a porch. I chose that apartment because it’s the one in the building that gets the day’s last sun.”
Almost two years later, Eskandari, a horticulturist at Gethsemane Garden Center on Chicago’s North Side, has turned his tiny portico into a private open-air room teeming with lush potted trees and shrubs, most of them hardy varieties usually planted in garden beds. An antique wicker love seat and old planter’s bench furnish the sitting area, and plants are trained to screen curious eyes from the nine-story building looming down the street. A wall lattice holds wreaths and multicolored light strings lend nighttime atmosphere.
It measures a mere 10 by 4 feet, but Eskandari’s balcony paradise shows how, with a little imagination and planning, suspended outdoor spaces can be made interesting, functional and even inspirational.
“I’ve had so many people go up there and say ‘I had no idea you could do this,'” Eskandari said. “I love my porch. It’s the first place I go when I walk in the door.”
Bringing the indoors out is a huge home and garden design trend, even in Chicago, with its withering winters and steamy summers.
Dwellers in multifamily buildings with balconies, porches or patios are prime candidates for the outdoor room movement. There are plenty of ways these small outside spaces can be made much more than a place to park the bike and barbecue grill, experts say.
“If you can fit a 24-inch diameter table and two chairs, then you’ve got a place for an outdoor room,” said Jennifer Brennan, horticulture information specialist at Chalet Nursery & Garden Shops in Wilmette. “Once you’ve got your seating, plants and lighting, you have a wonderful place to come home to after work.”
When it comes to decorating personal outdoor spaces, residents of multifamily buildings often face special challenges. Their outdoor space is likely small. The space is probably exposed to too much sun, shade or wind, or to too many neighboring windows. Balcony owners in particular need to take care about adding too much weight when furnishing.
But with ingenuity, and by taking advantage of new lightweight outdoor furniture and planting containers available in all styles and price ranges, experts say even sky-high outdoor spaces can be transformed into welcoming retreats with an earthy feel.
Joe and Donna Cusimano wanted just that when they purchased their 46th-floor condominium three years ago in Park Tower. Empty-nesters moving from a suburban house in Joliet, the couple bought the high-rise unit on the city’s Magnificent Mile for its curved, balconied terrace boasting soaring Lake Michigan and city views, Donna Cusimano said.
“We had a garden before, and I still wanted an area with a garden feel,” she said.
But at only 15-by-10 feet, the terrace was a far cry smaller than their previous plot. The Cusimanos called in Chicago landscape architect Maria Smithburg of Artemisia Inc.
Keeping weight and hanging restrictions and the space’s microclimate in mind, Smithburg turned the Cusimanos’ raw balcony into a colorful Mediterranean-inspired terrace with stylish, comfy outdoor furniture and containers overflowing with bold tropical foliage.
Limestone tiles were laid to blend with the adjoining kitchen flooring, leading the eye outside through the sliding glass doors and making the space seem larger. Two chairs and an ottoman with pale iron-look aluminum frames hold thick taupe cushions and provide cozy seating. A low glass-topped table in a contrasting dark finish offers a place to set drinks, books and plants.
Smithburg designed a free-standing metal trellis to arch along a supporting wall and over a cast-stone fountain, which appears to be wall-hung but is also free-standing.
A climbing hydrangea grows up the trellis, and the structure is anchored at each end by a pair of planter boxes with junipers for year-round evergreen interest. A small stainless-steel grill is tucked in a corner.
The potted annual plants–this season the Cusimanos are trying a few edibles–stand against the concrete balcony half-wall and metal railing and behind the table.
“Before, the terrace was totally bare. It was just a concrete floor,” Smithburg said. “Now, with the annuals and the trellis and the fountain, it has a much more exotic look. They really work to create a green garden effect.”
Donna Cusimano said she is learning to cope with the occasional wind-ravaged plant, something Smithburg said can usually be avoided by choosing tough plants such as lavender, which are acclimated to hot, dry climates.
The Cusimanos say they couldn’t be more pleased with their outdoor room.
“It is just so nice to be able to step outside,” Donna Cusimano said. “It allows us to take advantage of the summer weather, especially here with the Chicago winters.”
Brennan, of Chalet Nursery, said the changing seasons are an all-important consideration when designing an outdoor space, especially for people living in multiunit dwellings with limited storage. Cast-iron-look cast-aluminum furniture is not only light, it can be left outside all year, she said. There is outdoor furniture available now that looks like wicker but is actually weatherproof, easy-care polyurethane, she said.
For container plants, Brennan recommended using footed urns, oversize pots and window boxes made out of featherweight polyurethane.
“They come in so many beautiful finishes now–some look just like Italian terra cotta–and they can also be left there year-round,” Brennan said.
In the spring, the pots can be filled with bulbs, she said. A summer display might include brightly colored annuals and vines, or grasses and prairie perennials, such as black-eyed Susans, that can stand up to heat, wind, sun and drought. For the winter, cut evergreen boughs could fill the gap, she said.
For a summertime warm-climate feel, Norb Pranger, assistant store manager at the North Avenue Home Depot in Chicago, suggested tropical plants, such as palms or bird-of-paradise, in plastic pots for easy moving. When temperatures start to dip below 50 degrees, the plants should be moved inside, and “then you’ll have this great tropical that got sunlight all summer,” he said.
Brennan likes pretty table-top still lifes of hurricane lamps and candles (of citronella if bugs are a problem) and small fountains to help mask noise. “The running water is not a silencing effect, but it can be distracting,” she said.
There are new small, lightweight gas grills designed specifically for small outdoor spaces like balconies, Pranger said. And while outdoor fireplaces are a hot accessory for ground-hugging outdoor rooms, many landlords and condo associations do not allow them on balconies, he noted. A small propane-fueled table-top patio heater “would be very nice to have on chilly nights,” Pranger said.
For privacy and screening, experts recommend installing trellis.
“When covered with climbing vines, trellis really gives you the closed-in feel of a suburban back yard,” Pranger said. “I’ve seen where people have enclosed their entire balcony with trellis.”
Brennan suggested placing a row of pots with roses or other plants trained as standards (in a small tree form) that are just high enough to block the offending view. “You can also do the same thing by hanging plants,” she said, advising renters to check first with landlords to make sure it is OK to install the necessary hardware.
Eskandari uses plants to create a private feel at his balcony.
“It’s arranged so the views are blocked while I’m seated,” he said. “If I’m standing up for a minute, I don’t care if people see me.” A 2-foot-high wall is topped with boxwoods, perennials and herbs in lightweight planters that are discreetly weighed and tied so they don’t fall during strong winds. (With his porch’s sturdy brick construction, he does not have to worry as much as other balcony owners might about weight, he said.) He has a small weeping Katsura tree trained in a pot to act as a screen. “It has a drape to it, and when there is a little bit of wind movement, it makes a nice noise,” Eskandari said. “I don’t need a water fountain.”
At last count, Eskandari had on his porch 35 potted plants, which he rearranges as his mood sees fit. As at the Cusimanos’ terrace, wind can take a stressing toll, a condition Eskandari counters by misting twice daily with a hose attached to an indoor sink faucet.
Most of the plants are left outside through the winter thanks to insulating potting techniques including lining the insides with plastic bubble wrap or Styrofoam sheeting.
Indoor orchids and amaryllis are out there in warm weather, too, to load up on summer sunshine, he said.
With a thriving mini-forest of dwarf forsythia, small-leafed rhododendron, peony, Kousa dogwood and Japanese maple, Eskandari has created a tiny park just a step outside his third-floor walk-up. He reads up there, works up there, entertains there, and has even on occasion thrown down a towel to simply lie there.
“I’ve got that connection with nature here on the porch,” Eskandari said. “I feel like I’m in the ‘burbs, except for the `L’ rumbling off in the distance.”
