Best Vertical Planters for a Small Patio or Balcony: How to Choose

Which Vertical Planter Is Best for a Small Balcony?

The best vertical planter for a small patio or balcony is the one whose pockets are deep enough for your crop and whose watering you can keep up with. For most people that means wall-mounted troughs for salad greens and herbs when there is no floor space, a stacked planter or strawberry pot when there is a little, and a planter with a built-in water reservoir if nobody is home to water every day. Pocket depth decides what will grow. University of Maryland Extension puts herbs and salad greens at 4 to 6 inches of depth and strawberries at 8 inches.

Three checks sort the options quickly: how much direct sun the spot gets, how often you can water, and how much weight the structure can take. The sections below go through each one with numbers from extension services and the Royal Horticultural Society.

Vertical Planter Types Compared

Vertical planters fall into three families. Wall-mounted planters are troughs, boxes or pocket panels fixed to a wall, fence or railing. Stacked planters are tiers of pots or bowls with planting pockets around the sides, and the classic strawberry jar belongs here. Reservoir planters, often sold as towers, hold water in a chamber below the growing mix.

Type	Floor space	Watering	Suits	Check before buying
Wall-mounted troughs and pockets	None	By hand or an automatic system, often daily in summer	Lettuce, basil and other herbs, trailing tomatoes	How it fixes to the wall, and pocket depth of 4 to 6 inches or more
Stacked tiers and strawberry pots	A single pot’s footprint	When the surface is dry, daily or twice daily in heat	Day-neutral strawberries, thyme, mint, salad greens	Pocket depth near 8 inches for strawberries
Reservoir planters and towers	A single pot’s footprint	Refill the reservoir every few days	Salad greens, herbs, chard	Filled weight, and how the reservoir is topped up

Clemson’s container fact sheet also describes homemade versions: vertical planters built from wood latticework, or welded wire shaped into cylinders. The same rules on depth, water and weight apply to them.

Match Pocket Depth to the Crop

Depth is the number to look for on any product listing. Clemson notes that most plants need containers at least 6 to 8 inches deep for adequate rooting, and University of Maryland Extension sorts crops into three groups by the depth and volume of mix they need.

Group	Depth	Mix per container	Crops (University of Maryland Extension)
Small	4 to 6 inches	1 to 3 gallons	Basil, cilantro, thyme, mint, marjoram, radish, scallions, spinach, salad greens, Asian greens
Medium	8 to 12 inches	4 to 6 gallons	Dwarf tomato, pepper and eggplant, chard, beets, rosemary, parsley
Large	12 to 16 inches	8 to 10 gallons	Full-size tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumber

Compare the pocket depth and volume on the listing with these groups. A pocket 4 to 6 inches deep fits the small group, so plan around that list, and the large group belongs in ordinary tubs on the floor. A pocket that holds less than the 1 gallon minimum for the small group has less mix to hold water, so expect to water it more often than a standard pot. Our container size chart for vegetables lists more crops by gallons.

The RHS grew vegetables in containers fixed to a wall and reported which did well. Its good performers were lettuces, basils, herbs, chilli peppers, aubergines (eggplant), cucumbers and ‘Tumbling Tom’ tomatoes, a trailing variety. Runner beans gave a small, tough crop.

Strawberries in Stacked and Pocket Planters

Strawberries are the crop most often sold alongside stacked planters, and the match is sound with the right type. Iowa State University Extension recommends day-neutral and everbearing cultivars for containers because they fruit readily in their first year, and names ‘Albion’, ‘Cabrillo’, ‘Everest’ and ‘Seascape’ as day-neutral choices. It describes strawberry pots and jars, with their open pockets along the side, as nice options, and warns that keeping moisture consistent in a strawberry jar can be difficult because the plants sit at different levels. Our comparison of June-bearing and everbearing strawberries explains the types.

For an ordinary pot, Iowa State gives a benchmark: at least 12 inches in diameter and 8 inches deep, holding 3 or 4 plants. Use that to judge a stacked planter. A tier of similar width with three or four pockets is in the right range, and a tier half that size with the same number of pockets is crowded.

Two limits apply. Strawberries need at least 6 hours of direct sun a day. Day-neutral plants stop flowering and fruiting when temperatures rise above 80 to 85°F, so expect a pause in midsummer heat. Iowa State also cautions that hanging baskets are difficult to keep going through the season because they dry out quickly, and small high pockets behave much the same.

Watering: How Often You Can Be There

Small volumes of mix dry fast. Virginia Cooperative Extension says containers may need watering daily or even twice daily once plants are established. Iowa State gives the same range for container strawberries, and the RHS says plants on balconies and roofs may need water once, if not twice, a day in warm, windy weather. A wall of small pockets on an exposed balcony sits at the demanding end of that range.

If daily watering is not realistic, there are two ways out. The RHS suggests an automatic watering system for wall containers and calls automatic irrigation the ideal solution, especially for larger roof gardens. The other is a reservoir. University of Maryland Extension describes the design: the growing medium sits on a perforated platform directly above a water reservoir, and water wicks up into it. That arrangement conserves water and nutrients and lets you ignore the container for a few days.

Material changes the pace too. Fiberglass, plastic and lightweight metal are non-porous, and the RHS notes that soil in them does not dry out as fast as it does in terracotta. Color matters on a hot wall. Maryland warns that dark containers reach higher temperatures that can injure young roots.

Whatever the type, every pocket needs a way to drain. Gravel in the base will not do that job, as the page on rocks in the bottom of a pot explains. On an upper floor, catch the runoff in a tray and empty it after watering so it does not reach the neighbors below.

Weight and Fixing on a Balcony or Wall

A balcony can only take a certain weight, and the limit is set by the building. The RHS gives three practical rules for staying well inside it. Choose lightweight containers. Place heavy ones near load-bearing walls or over a load-bearing beam or joist, which carry more than unsupported areas. If you are not sure what the structure allows, ask a structural engineer or surveyor before buying anything tall or heavy.

The fill matters as much as the planter. University of Maryland Extension puts garden soil at approximately 75 pounds per cubic foot and soilless growing media at approximately 10 pounds per cubic foot. Use a lightweight soilless mix, and remember that water adds to that figure every time you irrigate.

For wall planters, the RHS method is to fix 2 by 2 inch timber battens to the wall at suitable intervals, staple mesh to them and wire the containers to the mesh. The battens hold the mesh away from the wall so air can circulate. Each container gets two holes on either side for the garden wire, and two more at the base are useful for pots at the top of the wall, where they are more likely to catch the wind. Fill with lightweight compost and leave a gap of at least 2 inches between the surface and the rim of a straight-sided pot, or 3 inches in a tapered pot, where compost is more likely to wash out.

Wind is the last check on an upper floor. The RHS recommends slatted or mesh screens, which filter and slow the wind, over solid screens that create turbulence. A tall freestanding planter belongs in the most sheltered corner.

Sun: Leafy Crops or Fruiting Crops

Count the hours of direct sun before choosing plants. Virginia Cooperative Extension says vegetables grown for their fruit need at least six hours of full, direct sunlight a day and do better with eight to ten, while root and leaf crops tolerate partial shade. A balcony with fewer than six hours is a lettuce, chard and herb balcony, and that suits shallow pockets well.

Aspect decides which wall to use. The RHS notes that a south-facing wall receives the full heat of the summer sun for most of the day, and that southwest and west-facing walls are also suitable for vegetables. The RHS adds that this heat has limitations as well as benefits, and it blamed extreme summer heat for its poor runner beans. Since leaf crops tolerate partial shade, the shadier end of the wall can go to salad greens and the sunniest rows to fruiting crops. The RHS fed its wall crops with a liquid tomato feed from June onward. When the season ends, the mix from the pockets can be refreshed and used again by following the steps for reusing old potting soil.