City gardens grow everywhere. But the next time you're admiring them take the time to look straight up. The cityscape is bursting with greenery in some of the loftiest, most impossible locations!

These rooftop and balcony landscapes add so much to the downtown. They soften hard contours, freshen the air, reduce noise, provide welcome shade and best of all, they put a smile on your face.

But beautiful high-rise gardens don't necessarily come easy. It can take tremendous effort to create a landscape on a rooftop. Access is the first challenge. In a home garden you simply use a wheelbarrow to move soil and plants. If you want to create a balcony garden, all your materials have to travel by elevator, through doors and often over off-white carpets. Once the garden is painstakingly planted, the gardener has to contend with heat, cold, wind, pollution and sun.

Planning is essential. Can you imagine how heavy a rooftop garden is after a torrential downpour! The rooftop gardener has to use well-drained containers and beds and shallow draining soil. When I look up at a gorgeous garden I imagine the gardener struggling up the thirty flights of stairs - because sometimes he can't use the elevator - dragging a large maple tree complete with giant rootball with him one painful step at a time. He finally gets it into the pot, heaves a sigh of relief and comes back the next morning to find it blown over by sky-high winds. So he restakes it, waters it, realizes it needs a companion, visits the nursery……. you get the point.

So my thought for the day is: bless the high-rise gardeners. They go far beyond the call of duty to create a city landscape for all to enjoy.