Dear GartenWeb readers,

I have a somewhat small city balcony which I would like to utilize to the fullest and get some privacy.

For the purpose, I would like to build my own pot, that would be insulated, probably with a small hater to keep it at 0-1 degrees Celsius during the winter to protect form freezing, and have enough soil to grow plant/grass.

It would be easiest to go and buy the biggest pot I could find in the shop, but then there wouldn't be any space left on my balcony...so I decided to build myself one, which will fit my requirements.

So far I am planning to make the container with the following dimensions:

width: 20cm (7.9 inches)

length:1.8 meter (70.9 inches)

height: 1 meter (39.8 inches)

The MAIN purpose of the plant is to hide the view from across the balcony. My neighbors can see Everything in my place and I hate it. I will go to great lengths to make this beautiful and practical.

I need your advice on 4 things:

- What should I plat there - I live in Germany, Munich, and winters are pretty cold, below freezing temps. What will survive the winter and be green(or yellow) to protect the view?

- Are the dimensions of my pot good or bad

- What type of soil & container drainage should I have

- What should be the best watering solution here so that I don't have to water the plant constantly? (I could build something if you suggest)

A container that's 1.8x1x0.2 would fit perfectly across the whole length of my balcony, and be high enough (1m) to reach the top rails, where I think the plat should start to grow, so that it can grow additional 1-2 meters and hide my view completely.

Because it gets really cold here in winter, I was thinking about building a wooden structure container, with insulated walls from the inside with polystyrene, where the insides would be a rubber lining to keep the water inside (the ones which the outdoor pools are made of/lined), and additional heating pads (the ones which are used in terrariums to keep the animals heated) which will get activated by a sensor whenever the temperature drops below 0 degrees (freezing) in order to prevent it from freezing. I can't keep the soil constantly heated, as it will be too expensive to keep, but I think that if only 1 Degree Celsius upkeep temperature is needed, it won't result in high electricity costs, especially if the pot is insulated with polystyrene.

The pot will have approximately 0.36 cubic meters volume left inside for soil. (12.7 cubic foot)

The balcony is facing North, East and West, and in the mornings and late afternoon it has direct sunlight. It's a pretty bright place, but direct sunlight is probably 1 hour in total during the day.

I wanted initially to plant a Thuja but then I saw recently some grasses like Miscanthus and I though it was beautiful and it could work.

I don't know exactly which type of grass I saw grow decoratively in an outside garden recently, I think it's something like Miscanthus, but I think it's beautiful, and might work well for me, as the ones I saw were about 1.5 in height and really bushy :)

Please let me know in the comments what would be the best plant/grass choice for this setup, is it a bad idea, have you seen something like this, any advice on automatical watering systems (as you've probably noticed, i would like to build, plant and forget about it, so that it takes care of itself).

What soil type would be best type, what sort of drainage should I have, as the pot would be really high and narrow.

I could change the design sizes if something could grow bushy and tall in such a narrow space. I was hoping to compensate for the narrowness with depth, but I am really not sure whether this is a good idea.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, and I would gladly share progress pictures, final results, and all the details along the way, once we decide on the direction to go.

Looking forward to reading some critics :)

Greetings from Munich