Monday 29 June 2009

mini roof garden

We're keen Gardeners' World viewers and particularly like the "30 Minute Make" section of the show. This idea for a mini roof garden on our tool shed is courtesy of Gardeners' World.

The make is really simple although took somewhat longer than 30 mins - mainly because everything had to be done from scratch, e.g. cutting up correct lengths of wood, trimming the plastic lining, etc. Cloddigger also had to reinforce the shed as the weight of the planting medium started to cause the roof to bulge slightly.

All the materials used to make our version of the mini roof garden have been recycled. The timber came from a couple of sources; pine from an old cupboard door (look carefully at the picture and you can see the door handle still attached!) and an old teak fire surround. The interesting thing about the teak is that there was a smallish off cut left over so it was donated to Woodwose Carving. Click here to see the post about "Gilgamesh"

The mini garden has been planted up with a mixture of different varieties of sedum - some from plants already in our garden which were split into smaller plants, the remainder from the bargain plant shelf at a local nursery - interspersed with marigolds and other plug plants and even a couple of Tumbling Tom tomato plants. The hope is that the sedum will eventually carpet the whole of the mini garden.

the mini roof garden runs the whole width of the tool shed (approx, 6') and goes back 2'6"

the only change made recently is the addition of a layer of grit surrounding the plants to discourage snails from chomping the marigolds. The picture below shows a close up of the plants pre-grit


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