Best plants for creating a cool condo balcony (faces west )?

West side balcony ??Location and lighting needs to be answered before your question will be solved.

With six - eight hours of sunlight a day you could do nice herb planters on your deck using oregano, thyme, savory, basil, and so on. Herbs are easy to grow and very forgiving so track total number of sunlight hours your deck receives in a day and move forward.

mid go with asparagus ferns, ferns, a large pot of Mexican petunias for color.

Westerly, here in Ct would mean a warm sun from 2 pm until sunset.if that is what you will have, you can grow impatience, many different varieties..herbs..I would grow something with fragrance..a lavender..the Spanish variety that looks like fat little bees hovering over it...some petunias are also fragrant...moonflowers or gramma oTT s morningglories...Egyptian peas they are chickpeas..purple blossoms with burgundy peapods. Good luck!

for full sun go with tropicals of Hibiscus,mandevilla vines,Lantana,Cuprea,Salvia.bidens,sweet potato vine as accent ,sun loving coleus,Dracaena purple spikes as accent,the list is endless.

If you have pets and people moon flowers are very poisonous look up on a gardening site on google your plants to see the danger some are🤢

True - thank you for the heads up!