A few years ago, I moved from my house in south Minneapolis to a townhouse in Roseville. Leaving a beloved garden space is the stuff of nightmares for gardeners. Whether the choice is ours or not, it’s like losing a good friend.

I left behind the full-yard garden I planted and nurtured for almost 30 years, hundreds of perennials, trees and shrubs I introduced, along with two ponds. It was, in a word, sad, but like any of us with dirt in our veins, I soon discovered that wherever I land I can make a garden.

I traded in a city lot for a courtyard the size of a couple parking spaces, along with a shallow deck and a little planting space in the back (where I need to have additions approved by the association… the horror!) As with any garden, it’s taken a couple years to learn the spaces, and I’ve picked up a few tricks along the way to make a patio or deck garden with no limits – because we gardeners tend to want it all.

Go vertical.

Incorporating trellises and obelisks with vines of both the annual and perennial variety not only provides you more options for plants, it also gives your deck or patio a strong sense of place. Wrapping a space in foliage creates a garden room and softens the hard edges of the structure. In my case, it also livened up the putty grey siding.

There are so many options for growing plants vertically from a ready-made trellis to DIY structures. In my patio, I am lucky to have a few bits of bare garden soil around the cement square where I have planted perennials such as clematis, honeysuckle vine ‘Dropmore Scarlet’, and Dutchman’s pipe vine. Annual Morning glory ‘Grandpa Ott’ and climbing Malabar spinach find a home in pots.

Veg out.

Speaking of climbing spinach, having a pot or two of vegetables and herbs really makes you feel like you have it all. If you have sun, you can grow veggies, and in my case, the concrete enclosed patio heats up in such a way that the plants love it. It’s like a little greenhouse.

It’s also a perk that the herbs I grow are much more accessible than my kitchen garden at the end of my city lot. ‘Tumbling Tom’ is a cherry tomato that worked well for me and peppers love growing in a pot. Follow all the good gardening practices of rich garden soil and consistent watering and you will enjoy homegrown produce.

Small trees and shrubs can have their place.

I grew an arborvitae in a pot for three seasons. It perished this past spring, but it might have been my fault; I should have been watering it earlier in the spring because it lived under an eave. I have tried a Dwarf Alberta Spruce this season with hopes of it surviving in a large pot (my patio is very protected).

I have a Japanese Maple ‘Emperor’ planted in a tiny bit of soil in the corner. I had a Japanese Maple survive a year in a pot and I also had a year where it did not. It’s a little hit or miss, but small trees and shrubs in pots are striking and also give you visual interest in the winter. Small specimens are increasingly more available at the garden centers in the spring, and for reasonable prices; they might be the perfect thriller for one of your garden pots.

Indulge in all your favorites and curate your containers.

Gardening on a patio, deck, courtyard or fire escape is hyper-condensed gardening. You are working in a super small space and now is the time to really indulge in all the plants that make your heart sing. There’s no room for the mundane.

Visit the plant store and collect all your favorites and you can’t go wrong. Plant shopping used to stress me out as I roamed the aisles searching for plants that would go together, but now I simply look for what catches my eye and makes me smile. If I find a snapdragon, for example, that’s an especially yummy color and I must have it, I will still hold it against other plants and wait for that inner ding to go off, telling me they work well together. But if I love it and I don’t hear the ding, I still get it. Back at home, I gather the bounty and begin to mix and match and assemble the containers. There’s always a chance I’ll need to find fill-ins, but I’ll have a collection in front of me of what I love the most.

Be fastidious with your container care.

A small space garden needs to be fabulous every inch of the way. Now is the time to be a plant scientist and do all the right things to give your containers every advantage. Invest in the richest potting mix. Fertilize with slow or quick release fertilize to supplement the soil, and water dutifully. Prune as needed to keep the plantings balanced. Your containers are your babies.

Don’t abandon your favorite perennials.

Perennials are the great love of my gardening life; to not have them on some level would be such a loss, so I incorporate them into the patio as much as possible. As I’ve mentioned, I have a few spots of ground around my patio, so I have a few favorites tucked in those. I overwinter hosta in two separate pots, and I grow miniature roses in pots, though I overwinter them in a garden space I have access to.

A water garden is always a cherry on top of the sundae.

If you have a little outdoor space with at least part sun, you can have a water garden. I think a water feature is always a ta-da moment and rather magical. I’ve had numerous container water gardens through the years; my current is a Red Wing crock with horsetail grass (which overwinters easily in a pot sitting on the patio), and a water lily ‘Helvola.’ It catches people’s eyes more than anything on the patio and underscores how a deck or patio garden, albeit small, can also be mighty.

Eric Johnson is a longtime contributor to Northern Gardener, blogger and lifelong gardener in Roseville, Minn.

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Photo credit: Eric Johnson.