I don't live in your zone but as a general rule of thumb, you want to look for plants that are 1 - 2 USDA hardiness zones colder than that designated for your area. This recommendation is mainly if you want to keep the plants out in winter. If you have a place to bring them in that is chilled, then you can go with the more marginal plants. Sometimes it is difficult to judge what might do well if you have no direct sun and there are ways to increase the amount of light around plants. In many cases, the plants will grow but the flowering will be reduced without that sunlight. Being south-facing, I expect that it might be a little blessing that you aren't getting full blazing sun all day, which is usually the case for south-facing. I often recommend that people buy and plant things that they like and give it a try. I often go to a nursery looking for one thing and see something else and bring that home. Then I end up researching the care for the plant. However regarding your mention of "droughts" and "severe snow", you need to make sure that the plant gets manual watering if there is no natural rain that makes it on the balcony (if it is covered and/or enclosed) and you may want to consider protection in winter for less hardy plants. Snow is actually a good insulator and I allow my hardy plants to be covered in it, and that will help reduce the incidence of continual freezes and thaws, but again, it's dependent on how much precipitation in general, reaches your balcony and ultimately your plants.

There's an article I found in Rose Magazine for Roses in containers. There are a number of points to consider. Is your balcony enclosed? Does the temperature drop below freezing in the winter. Most things can be grown successfully in containers but you have to provide some sort of protection in the winter. Plants that are hardy to Zone 5 will need to be protected from freezing in the winter; otherwise, the root dies and the plants don't come back. I've planted Chrysanthemum in a north facing balcony with success so there is enough light but I've never tried over wintering them. As for any other plants, you can go to a local nursery and look at those in the shade or part share category -- perennials or annuals (again, perennials will need to be protected in the winter -- put in basement or indoors). While a north facing balcony can be bright, it is certainly not full sun. Here is a link that might be useful: Container Roses

ASSUMPTIONS the ground is probably frozen, and maybe covered with snow you've done a little reading already, but can't find a step by step guide to go from grass to garden you have a little time and money to get things going 8 by 10 is not a huge space, with the right tools, fitness, and timing you could dig it in an afternoon. There are several ways to start a garden in lawn, but the fastest one is to dig. Lasagna gardening, about which you will hear much here, is a good method, especially if digging is hard for you, but takes time and materials. Building framed raised beds wnd filling them with soil is fast and effective, but the most expensive option. Only you can decide which is the best one. There are people here who garden for fun, people who feed their families, and people who feed hundreds of people. They all do things differently because of the scale of their efforts. The reason you want to start a garden is not unimportant, because there is no sense telling you a highly productive method if your primary motivation is fun - growing a lot of food is, simply, a lot of work, with hard labor and tedium both parts of the process. Growing a beautiful garden, is harder than growing a few vegetables to harvest every week, but that is just what a lot of people choose to do. Deciding why you want to garden will help to define how you should garden, including what kind of approach you should take in starting one. According to the map I will link you to below, Chicago is in Zone 5b. That tells you how cold it gets in an average winter. Haardiness zones are the first guideline to look at to know what will be able to survive where you are year round, but they give a guideline to everyone here about where you are, so we can give you better information. Put that on your member page so people who are answering your questions will have that to work with. Your Last Frost Date is mid to late April. That means you have 2 months to get things ready before you can safely put a lot of plants outside. That's a good thing, because in some ways you are getting a late start. Your First Frost Date is the last ten days of October. That is when some of your plants will likely die without taking steps to keep them going, but others will be okay, and still others will start to thrive. The months between Last and First frost are all the time you have to work with to grow tomatoes and cucumbers and many herbs, but you could be planting carrots in less than a month and eating a third planting of carrots in December. Chicago Drought Conditions are listed as Very Moist. This means that drainage could be an issue in your garden, and indicates that raised beds might be an advantage for you. For most vegetables this is a good thing, for some herbs, it makes things more difficult. Chicago was built on the edge of a lake that has shrunk considerably over the eons. The soil was originally rich loam overlying dense clay, but there was a lot of fill added as the city was built. The loam is great, it is a part of what made Illinois wealthy in the first place. The underlying clay has a lot of good plant nutrients, but will impede drainage. There is no way to tell if you have fill on top of that, or what that was, or how it affects the quality of your soil and its' appropriateness for growing food - a big problem in urban gardens is lead. A soil test will determine that for you and you should have a good soil lab right in the city to test it for you. 20 minutes ago I didn't know anything about Chicago gardening, but I've been a market gardener in zone 5b in Maine for almost 30 years, so I know where to look and what to look for. For anyone new to gardening, not knowing where to start or what questions to ask is a big first step. As you do your research and give us more details, we can continue to refine our suggestions about what you should do next. The link below will give you some good ideas. You should also go to the library and see if they have books on Urban Gardening, Lasagna Gardening, Square Foot Gardening, and Four Season Gardening. The more often you visit this site, the more answers you'll get. Those who persevere, succeed. Here is a link that might be useful: Extension service

Phyl: VINES: Typical vines are poor container subjects. There are some little vines and "viney" things that would work in Laguna Hills... Abutilon megapotamicum TRAILING CHINESE LANTERN Asarina antirrhinifolia VIOLET TWINING SNAPDRAGON Asparagus asparagoides FLORISTS SMILAX x Fatshedera lizei BOTANICAL WONDER Jasminum angulare SOUTH AFRICAN JASMINE Mandevilla (Dipladenia) splendens DIPLADENIA Rosa ÂAbsolutelyÂ, ÂJeanne LajoieÂ, ÂNozomi ÂRed CascadeÂ, ÂWork of Art MINIATURE CLIMBING ROSES Sollya parviflora AUSTRALIAN BLUEBELL CREEPER CUTFLOWERS IN CONTAINERS: Those that would do best... Shrubs -- Azara microphylla BOXLEAF AZARA - foliage Chaenomeles FLOWERING QUINCE Gardenia angusta GARDENIA Hydrangea macrophylla HYDRANGEA Ilex cornuta 'Willowleaf' CHINESE HOLLY -- foliage Ruscus aculeatus JERUSALEM BUTCHERÂS BROOM -- foliage Ruscus hypoglossum ITALIAN BUTCHERÂS BROOM -- folliage Perennials -- Agapanthus LILY-OF-THE-NILE Alstroemeria INCA LILY Anigozanthos KANGAROO PAW Cyrtomium falcatum HOLLY FERN -- foliage Dianthus PINKS, CARNATION Gerbera GERBERA Patrinia scabiosifolia PATRINIA Rumohra adiantiformis LEATHERLEAF FERN -- foliage Scabiosa PINCUSHION FLOWER Zantedeschia aethiopica CALLALILY Bulbs -- Crocosmia hybrids MONTBRETIA Freesia hybrids FREESIA Gladiolus callianthus ABYSSINIAN SWORD LILY Gladiolus tristis LEMON GLADIOLA, MARSH AFRIKANNER Iris xiphioides DUTCH, ENGLISH IRIS Ixia maculata CORN LILY Narcissus pseudonarcissus DAFFODIL Narcissus tazetta POLYANTHUS NARCISSUS Nerine GUERNSEY LILY Ornithogalum thyrsoides CHINCHERINCHEE Ranunculus asiaticus RANUNCULUS Triteleia 'Queen Fabiola' ITHERIALÂS SPEAR Annuals -- c = for cool season sowing (sow in fall) w = for warm season sowing (sow in spring) Antirrhinum majus (tall varieties) SNAPDRAGON -- c Calendula officinalis CALENDULA, POT MARIGOLD -- c Callistephus chinensis CHINA ASTER -- w Centaurea cyanus BACHELORS BUTTONS, CORNFLOWER -- c Centaurea moschata SWEET SULTAN -- c Lathyrus odoratus SWEET PEA -- c Limonium sinuatum STATICE -- c Matthiola incana STOCK -- c Molucella laevis BELLS-OF-IRELAND -- c Joe