How to Grow Food with No Garden at All

You do not need a garden

Here is the good news, right up front: you do not need a garden to grow food. A flat with a sunny windowsill, a balcony, a shared doorstep or even a bright kitchen worktop is enough to put real, fresh, home-grown food on your plate. People grow tomatoes in third-floor windows and pick salad from a balcony rail all over the UK, and there is no reason you can't join them.

What changes when you have no open ground is mostly the scale and the containers — not the basic idea. Plants still want light, water, compost and a little patience. Once you have those, the rest is just choosing the right crops for the space you actually have. This guide walks you through each kind of no-garden space, then tells you exactly what to start with.

If you want the full nuts-and-bolts of pot sizes, compost and feeding, our complete container growing guide is the place to go next. This page is about making the most of small, awkward and borrowed spaces.

Windowsills: herbs, salad and microgreens

A windowsill is the most underrated growing space in any home. It is warm, sheltered from wind and slugs, and right by the kitchen — so you actually use what you grow. A south- or west-facing sill is gold, but even an east-facing one will keep herbs and salad happy through the lighter half of the year.

Here in mid-June you can sow and pick almost continuously. Three things thrive on a sill with no fuss:

• Cut-and-come-again salad leaves — sow a shallow tray or trough of mixed leaves, snip them at 5–8cm, and they regrow for weeks. Re-sow a new tray every two or three weeks so you never run dry. This is the fastest food in this whole guide.
• Herbs — basil loves a warm sunny sill in summer, while parsley, chives, coriander and mint cope with a little less light. A few small pots give you cooking herbs all season for the price of one supermarket packet.
• Microgreens — pea shoots, radish and broccoli microgreens are ready to snip in 10–14 days, grown on a windowsill in nothing more than a seed tray of compost. They're the closest thing to instant gardening.

The two windowsill mistakes to avoid are too little light (plants stretch tall and pale — turn pots a quarter-turn every few days so they grow evenly) and overwatering small pots (let the top of the compost dry slightly between waterings). For the full method — pots, compost, light and watering rhythm — see our windowsill growing guide.

Doorsteps, porches and shared yards

If you have a front step, a back doorstep, a porch or a shared paved yard, you have a patio in miniature — and pots don't care that it's communal. A couple of large containers by a sunny door can carry far more food than people expect.

The trick on a doorstep is to go big with the pots and few with the plants. One 30–40cm pot holds a single tomato plant, a courgette, or a generous clump of salad and herbs. Big pots dry out more slowly, blow over less in a gusty doorway, and look tidy rather than cluttered — which matters in a shared space where you want to keep the neighbours onside.

Good doorstep crops include:

• Tomatoes — a bush or tumbling variety in a large pot or hanging basket, in the sunniest spot you have. See our growing tomatoes guide for varieties and feeding.
• Strawberries — happy in pots, troughs or hanging baskets, and they crop on a doorstep or by a porch beautifully. Our strawberries guide has the details.
• Salad, beetroot and radishes — quick, shallow-rooted and forgiving, perfect for a trough by the back door.

A few practical points for shared and communal spaces: keep everything on your own threshold or agreed patch, stand pots on saucers or pot feet so run-off doesn't stain shared paving, and bring nothing that trips a neighbour or blocks a path. A watering can and a quiet word usually keeps everyone happy. If your only outdoor space is borrowed or paved, the no-garden basics cornerstone covers how to choose pots and compost so they perform on hard surfaces.

Balconies: a proper little kitchen garden

A balcony is the closest a no-garden grower gets to a real plot, and you can be genuinely productive on one. The two things to respect are wind and weight. Wind dries pots fast and snaps tall plants, so cluster containers together for shelter, keep taller crops against the wall, and water more often than you think you need to in warm, breezy weather. Weight matters because wet compost is heavy — use plastic or fibre containers rather than stone, and don't overload a railing.

Once you've worked with those two, a sunny balcony grows a surprising menu. Climbing beans trained up canes or netting against the wall give a big crop from a small footprint. Tomatoes, chillies and courgettes all crop well in pots in a warm, sheltered spot. Salad, herbs and strawberries fill the gaps and the rail planters. Growing upwards — beans, peas and trained tomatoes — is how you fit the most food into the least floor space.

Our balcony vegetable garden guide goes into layout, wind protection and the best crops for sunny versus shady balconies. If your balcony is bright but never gets direct sun, lean on leafy crops and herbs rather than fruiting ones — they'll still give you plenty.

What to start with for quick wins

If you're new to all this, resist the urge to grow everything at once. Start with a few near-certain successes, get a harvest or two under your belt, and build from there. These are the crops that reward beginners with no garden:

• Cut-and-come-again salad — windowsill or doorstep, ready in weeks, regrows after cutting. The single best first crop.
• Herbs — basil, parsley, chives, mint and coriander. One pot each, picked little and often.
• Microgreens — pea shoots and radish greens on a sill, ready in under a fortnight.
• Radishes — sown in a shallow trough, pullable in around four weeks.
• Tomatoes — one bush or tumbling plant in a big sunny pot if you have six hours of direct light.
• Strawberries — a few plants in a basket or trough for a summer treat.

Notice what these have in common: they're fast, shallow-rooted, forgiving, and they don't need a deep bed or a lot of space. Once you've grown them successfully, branching out into beans up a balcony cane, a pot of chillies and peppers on the sunniest sill, or a windowsill jar of fresh herbs feels like the obvious next step rather than a leap.

When you're ready to buy a little kit, you genuinely don't need much to begin.

Light is the main limit, not space

If you take one thing from this guide, make it this: in a no-garden setup, light is almost always the limiting factor, not floor space. A tiny balcony in full sun will out-produce a roomy one in shade every time. Before you decide what to grow, spend a day noticing where the sun actually falls and for how long.

Match the crop to the light you have:

• Six or more hours of direct sun — you can grow the fruiting crops: tomatoes, chillies, peppers, courgettes, beans and strawberries.
• Three to five hours, or bright but indirect — lean on leafy and rooty crops: salad, spinach, herbs, radishes and beetroot, which are perfectly happy with less.
• Bright shade, no direct sun — stick to salad leaves, mint, parsley and chives. You'll still eat well; just skip the tomatoes.

The other ever-present limit is water. Small containers dry out fast, especially on a warm, breezy balcony, so check them daily in summer and don't let them bake dry. Beyond light and water, growing with no garden really is just growing in pots — so once you're set up, our container growing guide is your home base for everything from compost and pot sizes to feeding and keeping crops going through the seasons.

No garden has never been less of an excuse. A windowsill, a doorstep or a balcony, the right few crops, and a bit of sun — that's a real harvest, and it starts the day you sow your first tray.