You can cluster containers of different sizes and similar appearance together to create more of a 'garden' look. The larger ones you can use for small trees or shrubs, medium ones for mixed plantings and the smaller ones for colorful annuals or small specimen plants.

The Container Gardening forum here is an excellent resource for both best potting media (extremely important) and for maintenance issues (like watering, fertilizing and root pruning), which are also very important. Cotainer gardening is not at all like gardening in the ground and requires a pretty different approach :-)

You also need to be aware that growing plants in containers overwinter takes some study on hardiness......not everything one can grow in the ground in a zone 7 will survive a winter in a container. Containers are exposed to ambent air temperatures that can makes roots vulnerable to much more severe cold than they would experience in the ground, and on a balcony, cold winds that can impact hardiness and the ability to overwinter.

Thank for the link for container gardening, and for the warning about different tolerance to hardiness in pots vs. in the ground.

Balcony has south orientation, it has sun through the whole day. Also, our house is in the tightly packed suburb, which means lots of concrete around, which creates bit warmer microclimate.

Some plants I am considering are:

- Cherry laurel and Japanese laurel - for greenery and foliage

- Vines: Honeysuckle, Clematis (grown as annual), maybe kiwi or grape vines

- Fruit trees with nice foliage grown in dwarf style, like quince or pomegranate tree

A fragrant rose garden would be lovely.......here is a rooftop rose garden in Japan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43Y0CwuX2vw

Elephant ears.

I have 28 potted landscaping rose trees on a just over 1,000 sq ft wraparound 2nd floor decking. I enjoy their colorful display.

Jackson Perkins has Earth Angel rose tree for $40.46 each ( just marked down today, was $45.95), or 3 for $39.95 each, it’s a very pretty tree, hard to find. There are only 23 left at this moment.

And also Pope John Paul II rose tree is beautiful , it has very strong fragrance .

With a balcony that size, I'd be looking at including some vegetable type plants!

Mandevilla. You can bring it and clematis indoors in winter and treat them as perennials.

Dinner plate dahlia, Holly hocks, sunflower, delphinium, apples, dogwood, cherry blossoms.