Living on a Tiny Balcony - Creating a Garden Masterpiece

London isn't known for its large apartments with over sized balconies that allow for outdoor dining sets, grills and bikes like many places in the United States. Honestly, I'm lucky to be living somewhere with a balcony at all, not to mention facing a beautiful park. The only downfall to this is that we are a prime location for perching pigeons and the balcony is bland. We (and really I mean me) decided that it would be a great idea to spice it up a little and create a garden masterpiece with colorful flowers, herbs, vegetables and even our very own compost!
After doing some online research for the best ways to utilize small balconies for growing these types of plants, we headed off to the gardening store and went wild.

Step 1: Clean the Balcony (from the pigeon poop - uhh)
Step 2: (The fun part) Begin the planting. We purchased one over the balcony hanger for the flowers, one larger planter for the veggies and one smaller planter for the herbs at the local store to get started and I ordered a couple things from Amazon. We also found a crate on the side of the road that I decided to line with plastic from the compost bags and add herbs and chili's.
Step 3: Build a Tower Garden. I went to the local shop to get some PVC pipe and the tools to cut holes. (see in photo)
Step 4: Build a pallet garden. Create a vertical garden by using an old pallet and cutting it to size and lining with landscape mesh. (You can see step by step(ish) below):

Break apart and cut the pallet to size

Re-position the boards for plant space

Attach landscaping mesh and add soil
Cut small holes and insert plants

Voila, the final product.
 Next to my homemade compost made out of trashcans.

Step 5: The design on the garden. We wanted the balcony to be full of green but still have enough space for two chairs and a small little
table.
This is how it all turned out:

Tower Garden on the left

Balcony Garden in the making..

Adding the final touches

Two chairs and a table

Compost looking good
Weird things growing in there...

Enjoying the balcony :)

Even Oeli loves it!

Step 6: Create an Indoor Garden that makes it easier for the most commonly used herbs.

Updates since this was all created:
I was able to grow 3 strawberries, then the plants stopped producing any more. I found the culprit that was eating some of my plants (the entirety of my mixed salad I was trying to grow) and I accidentally killed it instead of letting it go free to turn into a butterfly somewhere else :(. Most of my spinach isn't growing well because it's a cold weather plant. My squash is struggling but I'm hoping the one that's currently growing doesn't die like the last one.
On the plus side:
I have 3 chili's growing, 1 pepper, 4 large tomatoes, and a bunch of cherry tomatoes. All of my herbs are growing pretty strong and the flowers are in full bloom.

I'm proud of my little balcony garden to make our apartment feel more homey :)