Roof Garden Articles

Roof gardens and balconies.

Roof garden articles.

If you live in a building without its own garden establishing a roof or balcony garden is the ideal way to create your own mini horticultural haven ensuring you don t miss out on growing a wide range of plants. The practice of cultivating food on the rooftop of buildings is sometimes referred to. Rooftop gardens and green roofs are the new backyards as shown in the book living roofs teneues 55. This type of roof garden requires minimum layer of soil substrate and hence it is easy to maintain.

Rooftop gardens also called living roofs or green roofs have many advantages including providing more space for agriculture adding beauty to the cityscape and increasing air quality. The depth of these mats can be as little as 25mm. The easiest and most personal approach to rooftop gardening is the use of containers and raised beds. Roof gardens and energy savings.

Author ashley penn a landscape architect and chartered member of the united kingdom s. In the second installation of the carlisle roofing series buildings editor in chief janelle penny chats with chris kann roof garden product manager for carlisle about best practices for green roof projects. In some cases pre grown trays or tiles of low mat forming vegetation can be used to green the surface. Containers are perfect for rooftop gardens because they are light portable flexible and affordable.

To better understand the energy benefits of a rooftop garden it s important to understand the concept of an urban heat island the increase in temperature that s found in virtually all urban areas solar radiation warms up concrete asphalt and other man made materials much faster and hotter than it warms trees plants and greenery. Vegetated roofs aren t just beautiful they re valuable tools for managing stormwater reducing the urban heat island effect and providing more usable space for building occupants. A roof garden is a garden on the roof of a building. Besides the decorative benefit roof plantings may provide food temperature control hydrological benefits architectural enhancement habitats or corridors for wildlife recreational opportunities and in large scale it may even have ecological benefits.

These gardens are suitable for storehouses garages roofs or other additional buildings around the house. You can create any style of rooftop garden with container grown plants from a few simple herb plants to a formal elegant potager.