Gay guide to urban gardening

From sprucing up your window box to growing a living wall, this professional urban gardener will help you do it.

An easy way to not only beatify your property but also improve the quality of the air in your apartment, urban gardening is quickly rising in popularity. Whether your "arable land" means a few window boxes, a couple potted plants in the kitchen, or -- if you're lucky -- something resembling a backyard, these tips, hints, and tricks from one of the area's best gay gardeners are sure to improve your green thumb.

"I try not to follow trends," says Ed MacLean, owner of Potted Up, a local company offering urban garden design and maintenance services. Instead, MacLean says, he customizes every project based on the customer's wants, needs, and specifications -- and those can very quite a bit. Potted Up clients seek to green their living spaces by adding beautiful gardens to balconies, rooftops, courtyards, window boxes -- even walls. (Yes, walls.)

Nestled in the heart of Chinatown, the Potted Up Urban Garden showroom at Vessel (125 Kingston St.) is quiet and organized. MacLean is soft-spoken and boasts salt-and-pepper hair, a Grecian jaw line, and dirt on his knees. "Anywhere you have an open space in the city, you can have a garden," he says as we navigate a shoulder-high display of brightly colored watering cans.

City dwellers interested in having their own gardens can face myriad challenges, but none that Potted Up isn't equipped to handle. "Like microclimates," MacLean says. It's important to choose plants that can withstand both the heat of summer and Boston's bitter winters. Wind can pose a problem for plants on balconies and rooftops; irrigation can be an issue (especially when your downstairs neighbor has a balcony directly under yours). When it comes to rooftop gardens, MacLean says, "You have to ask yourself: what plants grow on top of a mountain?" The answer: more than you think.

The most common gardening glitches, however, can be solved by choosing the right kind of plant/garden container. Lightweight, durable, and entirely customizable, Potted Up's container selection is vast and varied. Many are self-irrigating and don't leak. They come in dozens of shapes and endless colors and sizes. Each can be outfitted with wheels in order to offer a flexible, ever-changing landscape.

Perhaps most fascinating, though, are the Woolly Pockets hanging on the far wall of the showroom. Anything can be planted -- and watered -- in these wall gardens made of giant felt pockets without risking damage to your wall or floors. "These are for when customers have no other option" for gardening space, MacLean says.

We're surrounded by ready-made tool kits that are designed to fit underneath a kitchen sink. Aside from the full design and maintenance services Potted Up offers (which include design, irrigation, soil, lighting, plants, and continued labor and can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000), they also carry plenty of do-it-yourself supplies and all the advice you'll need to start your own urban Emerald City. "Someone must have been doing some bad shopping," MacLean says as he rights upturned orchid kits. "It looks like World War III in here."

Aside from improving the air quality of your living space and making all your neighbors jealous, there are plenty of good reasons to start your own urban garden, especially if you have kids. It's our responsibility to teach our children how to become "good stewards of the Earth," MacLean says. Also, the more kids know about vegetables -- dare to dream -- the more greens they'll be willing to add to their diets sans fussing and food fights.

Currently, Potted Up is managing fourteen urban gardens, but is still signing up clients for the 2010 season. "We're the proverbial Mom and Pop shop," MacLean says. "Although we're more of a Pop and Pop shop." MacLean explains to me how Potted Up's customer relationships are thought of as the business' roots, and they work to see them flower. No two gardens will ever look the same, he says. Each project is based on the client's "dream garden."

MacLean, a former event planner with Fenway Health, attended the Landscape Institute at Harvard University and started Potted Up after realizing that there were no resources available to help him with his four-season rooftop garden. One of the most important lessons he's learned? It's important to choose plants that are attractive year-round, MacLean says. "Because we live in New England, the view from the house is just as important as what it looks like from outside." MacLean will choose plants that flower in early March as well as trees with appealing bark and color palettes that are visually stunning all year round. "We're not just thinking about function and form," MacLean says, but about "beauty" as well.

In the back room of the Urban Garden showroom, desk lamps are pointed at a to-scale model of a 7,500-sqare foot home in Cape Cod. Tiny trees and shrubs -- made from clippings of MacLean's own garden -- line a small driveway and dot the front and back yards. MacLean and potted up have been working on the landscaping of this brand new house for about two years now (urban projects can take 4 to 6 weeks; suburbs can take anywhere from 4 to 12 weeks for Potted Up to complete). As the client's mind keeps changing, so does the model. MacLean is dedicated to the project and visits the actual site once a week. For this particular project, MacLean is tackling challenges from local wildlife -- deer, rabbits, and chipmunks -- as well as the customer specifications. Because the family has a dog, MacLean is careful not to use any plants that could be poisonous if ingested, and makes sure to avoid greenery that the family's kids are allergic to.

Potted Up takes it job of supporting the local economy seriously. By using plants that are native to New England, they can shop at local nurseries while respecting the environment by not using petroleum for long-distance transport. For example, MacLean says, they had a client who loved cacti, so Potted Up outfitted his rooftop garden with prickly pear cacti, which are native to the sand dunes of Cape Cod.

Potted Up's continued maintenance services are a large part of their appeal. His clients are "working so much," MacLean says. "Maintenance time [for a garden] isn't there -- even though enthusiasm may be high." The urban gardener extraordinaire and his associates devote quality time to each project -- no matter how large or small -- and even go so far to plan garden parties so that clients can show off their new digs. "We're making [gardens] outdoor rooms," MacLean says. Potted Up can provide outdoor lamps, rugs, and furniture as well. "It's an extension of your home. We're creating more liveable space."

MacLean grows evergreens, succulents, maple trees, boxwood, lavender, artemesia, and ornamental grass in his personal garden in Boston; and delphinium (MacLean's favorite), foxglove, black-eyed Susans, hollyhock, roses, wisteria, honeysuckle, iris, hydrangeas, obedient plant (yes, it lives up to its name; also known as the "Miss Manners"), bamboo, dogwood, birch, cedar, and styrax japonica at his summer home in the Cape. If some of these names seem a little foreign, stop in to the Urban Garden showroom or visit Potted Up's website at pottedup.com. MacLean would be happy to help.