CityLiving Lots of new niche firms are serving the industry, says Edel Morgan

The property boom has spawned some new and intriguing occupations. This week alone I learned of two women - a balcony designer and a property concierge - with job descriptions almost guaranteed to elicit a puzzled "a wha?" response.

Deirdre Whelan, a Delgany-based balcony designer, agrees there is much confusion over what she does: "I've been asked by people 'do you make balconies'?" While her skills don't extend to construction, she offers everything from advice on how to transform a balcony's appearance to a complete balcony makeover which, she says, can add up to 15 per cent to the value of your home.

Considering the microscopic size of some of the balconies that come with Irish apartments, the immediate temptation is to make a remark about a complete makeover taking all of five minutes or to surmise if she's charging by the square metre.

After talking to Whelan, who has a background in garden design, I now realise there's a whole lot more to her job than strategically placing a few potted plants and some fancy furniture. She started her business two years ago "when it began to occur to me there are so many people buying apartments who know very little about the plants that are suitable for balconies. You look around and you often see rubbish bags on them or a sad plant that looked great for two weeks and then keeled over. You can spend up to €250 just buying plants, which is a big investment, so why not get the right advice?"

Most of her clientele are women in their early to mid-thirties who "love the idea of sitting out in a profusion of colour with a glass of wine in the summer but some don't even know how to pot a plant".

Although Whelan only has a few male clients, they tend to prefer shade-loving plants, like ferns and hellebores, that are suitable for north-facing balconies "because they are architectural rather than the pretty ones you'd put on south or west-facing ones". She says her design skills come to play when she's asked to create a "structural look" with plants but they must be tailored to fit the space.

"New Zealand flax, for example, is a fabulous structural plant but it can get huge which is okay if you want to re-enact The Day of the Triffids. What people often don't realise is that you can buy the dwarf version of many plants."

A client with a duplex in Bray called her in to revive a tiny drab north-facing balcony off the kitchen and a slightly larger one off the lounge "that had a tired geranium that was burned up by the wind".

Whelan put herbs and evergreen plants, like osmanthus and pyracanthus, in the kitchen balcony to give year-round colour. "On the other balcony we put a window box under the railing which created great privacy all of a sudden. She didn't like the grey capping stone on the wall so I said "would you not paint it?" and we put an urn in the corner with clematis trailing out with a purple flower".

For another client who wanted privacy, she commissioned a carpenter to make a 16ft long wooden planter "with one metre high bamboo and discrete lights about the foliage".

"But you have to be careful not to end up with a caged-in and claustrophobic feeling, and that's where the different plants come in. The inclination when you want to shelter from the prevailing wind is to put up a solid barrier but the wind just batters against it. You need something to filter the wind, like bamboo. You also have to make sure there's visual flow between the interior of the apartment and the balcony, so that they're not divorced from each other. "

Tara Dalrymple's Busy Lizzie service based in Galway has been offering a "lifestyle management" service to busy professionals and frazzled parents since 2004 but is now branching into the property "concierge" business. A concierge will take the stress out of buying and selling a house by doing the dirty work, like cleaning the house and doing the garden, before viewings or helping to organise a move. Dalrymple says she has being doing a lot of "meeting and greeting and trying to educate people about the service" which is relatively new to the Irish market.

The company, which was recently accepted as a member of the International Concierge and Errand Association, is now targeting auctioneers to include it as an add-on service to clients. They will also act as gophers for the auctioneer by taking digital photos, keeping brochures and flier boxes stocked and delivering keys to properties. Dalrymple reckons that any auctioneer offering this service would have "a secret weapon" in its competitive arsenal, particularly if the market quietens down. She says Galway estate agent has just signed up to the service but won't say who . "We plan to expand it to Dublin but we want to test it in Galway first and make sure we've got it right."

Busy Lizzie charges around €35 per hour "but gets cheaper the more we do". Her biggest clients are couples and people with children "who are working crazy hours and find it impossible to do it all".

Deirdre Whelan can be contacted on deirdrewhelan@eircom.net and Busy Lizzie's website is www.busylizzie.ie.

- emorgan@irish-times.ie