A Balcony garden at Chelsea: a small sanctuary done beautifully

Freddie Strickland and Ben Gifford’s A Space to Read Balcony Garden felt like one of those. It was designed as an outdoor reading room — a balcony garden for sitting, tending a few plants, and disappearing into a book for a while — and there was something very appealing about that from the outset. In a show full of ideas about wellbeing, refuge and restoration, this small garden seemed to hold all of that in a very quiet, convincing way.

What I liked most about it was that it did not try too hard. It understood something that the best small spaces usually do: that intimacy is its own kind of luxury. On a balcony, you do not need dozens of grand gestures. You need enough softness to blur the edges, enough height to create enclosure, and enough planting to make the whole thing feel immersive rather than exposed. That seemed to be the real success of this garden. It made a relatively compact space feel cocooning, calm and deeply green.

The planting sounds lovely too — peonies, sweet peas, geraniums and violets, all working within a softer palette of verdant greens, whites, pinks and pale yellows. It is the sort of combination that feels romantic without being fussy, and calming without becoming flat. I always think those quieter palettes are especially effective in smaller spaces, where you are close to every leaf and flower and do not need things shouting at you. Here, the planting seems to have been used not just decoratively, but atmospherically — to soften the boundaries, cool the eye, and make the balcony feel like somewhere you could happily stay for hours.

That idea of plants softening the edges of a space is one I come back to often. A balcony can so easily feel exposed — a bit hard, a bit overlooked, a bit temporary. But once planting begins to gather around you, it changes the whole experience of being there. A railing disappears behind foliage. A corner becomes a place to sit. A wall feels less abrupt. The garden starts to hold you a little. Freddie Strickland spoke directly about plants doing this work, and I think that is exactly what makes small-space gardening so rewarding: the changes can be subtle, but the emotional effect is huge.

There is also something reassuring about the fact that this was not a balcony garden built around novelty for novelty’s sake. It was rooted in familiar pleasures: reading, tending plants, sitting quietly, being surrounded by green. Even the materials and layout seem to have leaned into that slightly bookish, restful atmosphere, with natural wood, shelves and a large tree helping to create the sense of a room outdoors. It feels like a very useful reminder that a balcony garden does not need to become an over-designed exercise. Often, it is enough for it to be somewhere you genuinely want to be.

I think that is why this garden feels so resonant beyond Chelsea. Most of us are not making show gardens. We are trying to make a small outside space feel better — softer, greener, calmer, more ours. A balcony like this offers a lovely model for that. Not because it is something to copy plant for plant, but because it understands the mood so well. It suggests that even a modest space can become a sanctuary if the planting is generous, the seating is inviting, and the whole thing is designed around how you want to feel when you step outside.
And perhaps that is what I liked most about it in the end. It did not feel like a balcony trying to be anything other than a balcony. It simply showed just how beautiful, restorative and enveloping a small garden can be when it is made with care.