There’s no doubt that urban living places a premium on outdoor space, especially for those who love homegrown vegetables and the peace of a little time with Mother Nature. Our good fortune in finding a rental loft with tall south-facing windows featuring recessed sills was both a blessing and a problem, considering our neighbors are a mere fifteen foot walled-in, lava rock filled courtyard away. Filling the windows with plants of varying heights and fullness satisfied both our need to indulge our green thumbs, and provided a privacy screen without sacrificing the beauty of a home filled with ample natural light. It also provided the benefit of an air-purifying and dust-preventing filter between our indoor air and an outside tainted with bus exhaust from proximity to a major city traffic artery — important in a home where both inhabitants suffer from outdoor allergies.

Bonus: two of the windows are located in the kitchen, which puts fresh basil and rosemary close at hand for the minimal expense of starter seedlings ($3-6 at any local or chain gardening center/home repair superstore), potting soil (around $1 per pound at the same locations), and containers suitable for gardening (we like traditional terra cotta pots, and $1.99 plastic waste cans — http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20052012 — for larger vegetable plants). Compare that with $3-4 paid for a small bunch of herbs at most grocery stores, which tend to spoil rapidly in the refrigerator even with the fancy herb keepers, and DIY comes out ahead.