Balcony Garden Project

#balcony #greeninfrastructure #pollinators

About the Project

The Balcony Garden project is a participatory science project, exploring the potential of balconies as green space for urban biodiversity conservation. The built environment poses many challenges for urban wildlife, such as insufficient habitat and resources, pollution lowering habitat quality, and limited connectivity between habitats across urban landscapes. Though balcony gardening is not new, there is little information on how they can help support urban wildlife. Given balconies are small and widespread in cities, we would like to determine what urban wildlife can be supported.

Balconies for pollinators in 2025

For Summer 2025, we will be putting native and naturalized plants on participating balconies, and using time lapse cameras to record pollinators that visit the plants. We will provide the training and all equipment required for the surveys, including camera, SD cards, and camera tripods. Plants can be kept by participants after the study.

Monarch butterfly Pilot Study in 2024

In 2024, we explored the capacity of balcony gardens to support Monarch butterflies. We recruited 36+ members of the community from boroughs with high Monarch butterfly observations in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie, Le Sud-Ouest, Verdun, and Lachine. We also recruited participants to help us test the growth of native or naturalized plant species that are also pollinator-friendly, to better understand what other pollinator plants can be grown on balconies.

Although we did not find a lot of Monarchs (they were few in 2024!) We did find out more about gardening with native/naturalized perennials on balconies – that they can bloom beautifully and attract bees and pollinators.

What do participants have to do?

Participants will place the experiment plants on their balconies. Participants will help set up the cameras to record pollinators on sunny days, for around 15 days total between June to September.

Selected participants will

be provided with a variety of plants and instructions on how to care for them
care for the plants and set up timelapse cameras to observe pollinators that visit the balcony garden throughout the summer

Why green balconies?

Urban nature is increasingly recognised for its benefits for physical and mental health of city residents. However, the built environment poses many challenges for biodiversity, particularly sensitive species like Monarchs such as insufficient resources and habitat, pollution affecting habitat quality, and barriers that limit movement across urban landscapes.

Studies have already found that small green spaces in cities such as backyards can be important for supporting urban biodiversity by creating a combined network of backyards and small green patches. Balconies are common privately-owned spaces in cities, where residents can take urban greening and biodiversity conservation into their own hands, yet little is known about their capacity to support biodiversity and provide connectivity. We would therefore like to explore if a combined effort of green balconies can benefit biodiversity, whilst also increasing access to urban nature.

Sign-up and volunteer your balcony here!