"I didn't want to have just petunias," he says, waving an arm at containers holding trees, roses and even fat stalks of ripening corn. "I like things that get too big, like plume poppies." By midsummer the potted garden has grown so bounteous he can barely squeeze through to reach the little table and chairs where he dines, looking out over city skyscrapers to sunsets over the Olympic Mountains.

Elements of Vita Sackville-West's famously romantic white garden are re-created in miniature on James Savage's tiny, fourth-floor balcony; pale, luminous flowers and silvery foliage glow in the evenings, set off by a backdrop of evergreens.		Savage has created a complete garden on a 35-foot balcony, seen here from his vegetable garden on the top balcony.

Years ago on a visit to Germany, Savage's friends put him up in a hotel with a wild and overgrown garden on a garage rooftop. It isn't the individual plants he remembers from this untamed rooftop garden, but rather how it felt to be outdoors, up high, and so surrounded by green walls that he had to stand up to see the view. He decided that someday he'd make a garden with the same ambience of enclosure and quiet retreat.

An exposed, potted garden is the price to be paid for an expansive view of city, water and mountains from Savage's condominium in the Pike/Pine corridor.
	Savage's contained vegetable plot produced eight ears of corn last summer.

Plants and objects from his past have come together to create the retreat he has long held in his memory. Savage brought favorite hostas with him from earlier, more conventional gardens, where they grew in the ground. The wrought-iron gates that decorate one of the little balconies were originally from his grandmother's house in Beaverton, Ore.

The lower terrace outside his living-room windows is 35 feet long, divided in half by a chimney. The north side is planted all in white flowers that show up well in the evening. Pearly clematis, white geraniums, nicotiana, roses and lilies, trimmed with silver-leafed artemisia, cause this corner of the terrace to maintain its glow even as the sky darkens.

The other half of the balcony is a canvas for playing with color. This season he used impatiens, roses, clematis and hydrangeas in shades of pink and lavender. He plans to make next year's garden an all-green affair in shades from chartreuse to darkest forest primeval. Close to the window are grouped several small pines he first used as living Christmas trees. Strung year-round with little lights, they create the feeling of an illuminated woods to be admired from the indoor divan. This evergreen area serves as a year-round hit of nature, a buffer between condo and city.

"It took me awhile to catch on to what works up here," explains Savage of the windy terraces, which face due west. He refreshes the soil annually, fertilizes often, waters daily. Despite its wildness, this isn't a low-maintenance garden; plants are crowded in for effect, and are exposed in ways that stress and dry them out.

Though everything is contained in pots, Savage has used such an eclectic mix of plantings that he is surprised every time he goes out on the balcony. New plants volunteer, something seeds in, a vine clambers over a different plant than intended, and he enjoys the unpredictability expected of a much larger garden. Even the boxwood, which he planned to keep clipped, has been left alone to grow into its natural shape. Gardening in pots is usually an exercise in controlling plants, but Savage has successfully found that ideal tension between contained and abundant, cared-for and ignored.

And what garden would be complete without a vegetable plot? Or in this case, vegetable pots. Savage's condo is on two levels, with a spiral staircase leading to an upstairs bedroom. On a narrow deck outside the window (through which he climbs to water the edibles) Savage grows pots of blueberries, tomatoes, strawberries, herbs, a grape vine, corn and even a little apple tree. He simply runs up the staircase to harvest some berries for breakfast, or pluck an ear of corn at dinnertime. "It isn't much for a normal garden, but it tastes great," he says, boasting of eight fresh ears of corn from last year's harvest.

"I do let the weeds go a bit," Savage confesses. "It is so fun to go out there and feel like I'm really gardening." And garden he does, for he has transformed a few windy square feet into an evergreen woods, a fruit and vegetable plot, a laboratory for color and a fragrant retreat — four floors up in the heart of the city.