The balcony is eight feet wide and I'd somehow managed to fill every inch of floor space with pots, which meant no room to actually stand out there. Solution: a simple two-tier shelf built from cedar so it can handle the weather without much fuss.
Took a weekend, cost less than I expected, and immediately made room for four more plants I definitely did not need but bought anyway.
Lessons for next time
- Cedar over pine, worth the extra cost for anything staying outside year-round
- Leave more gap between shelves than seems necessary — trailing plants need headroom
- Wheels on the base would have made cleaning underneath so much easier