Shop Products
Houzz Logo Print
borderbarb

Rooftop Gardening

borderbarb
13 years ago

I thought I'd toss this out for anyone interested. If no response in a few days I will bump it down. Tho I have a yard to garden in, it's interesting to see the various ways people adapt to their environment and still garden. This article is about various roof-gardening enterprises. barb

////////

http://www.nctimes.com/business/article_6e9d561f-d6b6-5f32-a159-bb2cc01917b9.html

More companies create tools for rooftop gardening

TRENTON, Mich. ---- Using heat from a forge that turns orange-hot metal into everything from car parts to hand tools, a Michigan manufacturer is developing an energy-efficient way to warm a year-round greenhouse on the company's roof.

....snip....Sky Vegetables Inc.[ http://www.skyvegetables.com/about.html ] aims to build hydroponic farms on roofs in New York, Washington, D.C., and the Boston and San Francisco areas to make more fresh produce available in cities.

Another company based near Chicago, GreenGrid Roofs,[ http://www.greengridroofs.com/ ] sells a modular system of plastic bins that make it easier to install rooftop beds.

Here is a link that might be useful: More companies create tools for rooftop gardening

Comments (6)

  • lazy_gardens
    13 years ago

    Interesting idea.

    The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum has some of their displays "green roofed" with desert natives. They immediately acquired a large population of small rodents that appreciated the refuge from coyotes and snakes :(

    So then they built "bridges" to the roof so the predators could get up there to control the rodents that were eating all the plants.

    I don't know how that is working.

  • borderbarb
    Original Author
    13 years ago

    One of my 'fantasy homes' [will never be built] is from a home built by Frank Lloyd Wright ... soil bermed on 3 sides, with one side open to let sun/air in. The pictures were beautiful, as are my mental pictures. That house had a grove of trees over one side and prairie grasses/flowers over the other sides ... and of course, like all FLW structures, beautiful interiors....sigh. Anyway, it is interesting to see the different/ingenious ways that people manage to 'garden' even in a dense city. Along same lines is the old movie GREEN CARD about a young woman who commits immigration fraud to get an apartment with a green house. very lighthearted theme.

  • gargwarb
    13 years ago

    Your insight is astonishing, viresh. In order to provide you with some financial support to free you up for more academic pursuits, I've purchased four of your granite counter tops. And I don't even have any counters in my home. You'll also be pleased to learn that I'm pretty cocky but I've decided that I would like to work on becoming overtly vain so I bought a vanity as well. Thank you for coming into my life.

  • gargwarb
    13 years ago

    By the way, I'm not sure that building a bridge to attract a pack of large animals to the roof of your museum to control a pack of smaller animals is a good idea.

    I was going to describe my concerns in this post but I'm feeling artsy today, so to make my point I'm going to write a folk song about it instead. I think I'll make it about an elderly woman with poor decision making skills who consumes a long list of progressively larger and more vicious animals in an attempt to settle her stomach. I don't want to give away all the details but in the end, she'll surely die.

  • Dan _Staley (5b Sunset 2B AHS 7)
    13 years ago

    I spoke at a conference last year that had several speakers describing the outcomes of the use of several materials on green roofs. The extent of the knowledge out there is truly amazing and I have no problem imagining a wide range of gardens on roofs, many even that can be successful with few inputs. That said, the Sonora museum clearly failed to think everything through.

    Dan

  • alexcortez
    13 years ago

    When I have visited Sevilla and Madrid there were lots of rooftop gardens on building. They were beautiful notes of green in a sea of brick and concrete. I tried to find pictures but just have a generic link from google pictures. I have never seen those in the US though. London had an amazing club called RoofTop Garden or something like that and I used to go there just to appreciate the garden. It was simply breathtaking.

    Here is a link that might be useful: Pictures of Rooftop Gardens

Sponsored
EA Home Design
Average rating: 5 out of 5 stars69 Reviews
Loudoun County's Trusted Kitchen & Bath Designers | Best of Houzz