r/germany • u/DuckFew1483 • 1d ago
Question Balcony flowers in Germany —How does the German balcony flower cycle work?
Hello, I live in Germany and have got a beautiful balcony. I really love the traditional German balcony style where the balcony boxes are full of beautiful blooming flowers that spill and trail over the railing. I have attached some images fir reference. I am total beginner and have never had a plant in my house but i want my house balcony blooming with flowers. I am looking for guidance so that i also can have a blooming balcony all year round. My questions are very silly so please bear with me.
- When should I start? When is the right time of year to start planting balcony flowers in Germany? Should I buy seeds and grow them myself, or is it better for a beginner to buy ready-grown/flowering plants from a Gartencenter and put them into my balcony boxes?
- Which varieties flowers last for longest time?
- What happens when the flowers stop blooming in autumn/winter? Do you cut the plants back? Do you leave them in the balcony boxes?
- Do people bring the plants inside for winter?
- Do the same plants survive winter and go back outside in spring and flower again? Or is it more normal in Germany to replace the plants every spring and buy new ones?
- If I want my balcony to look nice throughout the whole year, what would you plant for spring, summer, autumn and winter?
- Are there flowers/plants that can stay outside over winter and come back again the following year?
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u/Rayray_A3xx Germany 1d ago
Also, Petunias and pelargoniums are not native to Germany, and considered neophytes. So while they look pretty, there is actually (close to) no use for pollinators. In case that is important to you.
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u/PandalfTheWise 1d ago
Hey, if you want you can crosspost in r/Garten (the German r/gardening). We have many beautiful balconies over there
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u/old_wired Bodensee 1d ago
If you live in an apartment building you may have to check the Hausordnung or as a renter talk to your landlord. It may be, that you have to hang the "Balkonkästen" on the inside.
Most of those plants are just planted new every year in spring. In spring the garden shops are full of those plants. You just pick some colors you like.
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u/Queen-Ghidorah Germany 1d ago
When should I start? When is the right time of year to start planting balcony flowers in Germany?
This is easy. As soon as you find the first geraniums on sale outside your local supermarkets.
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u/sparklykublaikhan 1d ago
For my south facing facade, I forgot to water them and they eventually die, then i buy some to replace them when I visit the building store, then I gave up and just keep two pots of Christmas tree in the front door
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u/Eska2020 20h ago
Fill a wine or beer bottle and stick it upside down into the soil after you water.
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u/PandalfTheWise 1d ago
I'd start with buying for the first year. You start in the spring and there will be tons of flowers and gardening stuff (potting soil, flower pots) everywhere, even in supermarkets.
Some flowers are "einjährig" (one year), some "zweijährig" (two year) and some "mehrjährig" (lives until you kill it). I prefer the "mehrjährigen", because I don't want to plant everything new every year, and have only a few new plants every year (because I can't stop myself from buying them).
When they stop blooming you can cut them or just leave them be. You can also gather some seeds for the next year. Most of my plants are "winterhart", meaning they stay outside over the winter. Don't forget to water them every once in a while even in winter, when there's not much rain and/or you balcony has a roof.
Every plant has a sign which shows in which month they bloom, so you can buy different ones that bloom in different months.
If you want, you can also plant some herbs! Mint and thyme for example bloom very pretty and are yummy for you and the insects.
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u/squirrelpickle Auslander // Nordrhein-Westfalen 17h ago
"mehrjährig" (lives until you kill it)
Clearly all of mine are like this. Except none of them get to live a full cycle, much less a year.
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u/RosieTheRedReddit 1d ago
Following because I'm curious too! I think they are mostly climbing petunias but I'm not totally sure.
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u/Guilty-Scar-2332 1d ago
So... None of it is how it MUST be done. Just the most general approach.
First, you must pick your flowers. There are entire lists of suitable hanging flowers for balconies (e.g. https://www.mein-schoener-garten.de/gartenpraxis/balkon-terrasse/haengeblumen-balkon-42547) and they all have different properties but the classic choice are geraniums.
Usually, you don't grow them yourselves from seed. You buy trays with plugs. You can also buy fully grown plants but that gets expensive quickly if you have more than one box on that balcony rail. Those cheap trays are a good compromise and much more reliable and faster than trying to grow them from seed.
Geraniums generally bloom from May to October, so they're doing pretty well in that regard. You can buy them staring in late March or April, basically once they can go into those planter boxes without freezing right away.
If you try to overwinter them, you apparently need to take them out of the boxes and put into a different substrate? Or just take cuttings.
Most people don't really bother and just treat them as annuals that die once it gets cold.
Personally, I don't really bother with cleaning up the balcony boxes until spring but if they're facing the streat you should probably at least cut them down so they don't look super messy.
Winter IMO just does not really look great. It's okay, it's a season for rest for the plants too.
The people I know who want pretty flower boxes all year round usually put some moss and branches and some ornaments in there. Real flowers only start with snow drops, the first messager of spring :)
You can absolutely plan for self-sustaining flower boxes but they won't look as polished as those huge cascades of geraniums.
Usually, you'll look at some bulbs and wildflowers that distribute their own seed and grow from that again. E.g. we had great luck with tagetes (including edible varieties!) and cornflowers. Also good experiences with grape hyacinths and wild tulips. Lavender fares pretty well too. And of course strawberries... We have a variety that produces all summer long, with pink flowers, and they also are super sturdy.
We had limited success with jasmine and petunias. Some grew back, but not all that reliable.
The classical look definitely is produced by replacing the plants at least once per year.
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u/Eska2020 1d ago
These are mostly pelargoniums and hanging pelargoniums. In your first SWISS photo I believe I see creeping jenny in there too.
Pelargoniums are annuals. You redo them every April ish. Creeping jenny will most winters survive and need to be thinned out/divided every year.
Perennials im balcony plamters exist, but remember how small a rail planter is. The conditions will be very very cold in the winter and will dry out very very very fast in the summer. Getting a perennial to thrive will be tricky and depend heavily on your microclimate and which direction it faces. That said, look at hardy hanging geraniums (pelargoniums are not geraniums but are frequently called that). They wont be nearly as opulent as the pelargoniums.
Petunias are also popular, but an annual.
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u/brazzy42 Bayern 1d ago
Pelargoniums are annuals. You redo them every April ish.
This is not true. There are both annual and perennial varieties, and the hanging variety from OP's photo is most definitely perennial (it could not grow that large in a single year). However, they cannot survive a German winter and need to be overwintered in a frost-free environment.
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u/Eska2020 1d ago
You are conflating pelargoniums, which are tropical and for all intents and purposes strictly annuals in Europe, and hardy geraniums, which are perennials across the continent. This is because many people call pelargoniums "geraniums". They are different though.
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u/brazzy42 Bayern 1d ago
My point is that for the intent and purpose of having the kind of flower display in OP's photo, people can and do make pelargoniums perennial by overwintering them in a frost-free environment.
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u/Eska2020 22h ago
Oh, but how do you do that without a greenhouse? I wanted to over winter my Mandeville for the same reason, but dono where.
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u/brazzy42 Bayern 19h ago
And that's why you see that kind of huge cascading ones mainly on hotels, public offices, or other large buildings that have lots of storage room and/or the money to outsource it to garden centers with greenhouses.
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u/Eska2020 18h ago
Which beings us back to what i said, functionally these are annuals. Most people re-buy them every spring.
A cascading pelargonium can defo do 30 to 50 or 60cm, maybe even longer, in one year.
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u/icecoldcold 1d ago
There are a lot of good suggestions here. Since you say you are a total beginner, start small and test it out. Don’t go all out and buy a ton of plants , pots, soil right away. You’ve got to do trial and error and see what works, etc. Go slow. Otherwise you might burn out because of pest issues or watering daily and dirt and leaf debris everwhere.
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u/Zach20032000 2h ago
I would also suggest to maybe use plants that aren't 'just' flowers. On our balcony we have arugula, camomile, sage, strawberries, rosemary, lavender, ... which all get very beautiful when they start to bloom. Of course it won't look as full or colourful as the pictures show that OP suggested, but it might be a bit easier for beginners to take care of, and it might be more useful for bees, AND you can snack berries, have a salad, make some tea or whatever you want to do (depending on the plants you get).
And most of those plants even have edible flowers
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u/Kujaichi 1d ago
There are a lot of books specifically about flowers on your balcony, I'd check out your local library!
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u/realkunkun 1d ago
Step 1: Live in a decent place, can‘t have shit in Ruhrpott without it getting stolen
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u/cice2045neu 1d ago
Usually you buy them as small plants in late spring and plant them yourself with an appropriate distance to each other.
Hänge-Geranien is a very common species used. But there are others, like Petunia. Garden centres will stock them at the right time if the year. Most will die in winter and you start over the next year. They need daily water and care, so it’s not for the faint hearted so to speak.