Roofs & Rambles

Common toadflax (Linaria vulgaris) is an excellent plant on green roofs. However it is vulnerable to drought and therefore needs to be in at least 150mm to really flourish. A good tip is to plant between a couple of logs. The logs provide a little shade and protection form the wind. This allows moisture to [...]

A windy June afternoon visit to the wonderful meadow roof above St. James’ tube station I was escorting Gary Simpson from Australia. This green roof, designed for rare bugs – bees, spiders and beetles,  also has a few arrays of photovoltaic panels. It is is certainly looking wonderful with the cornfield annuals swaying in the [...]

It has been a few years now since I visited any of the green roofs in Switzerland that hold breeding pairs of Lapwings. Green roofs are important habitats for Lapwings in the country as most of the land available to the birds has been turned over to agriculture. Roofs offer some of the only habitat [...]

This is one of the most remarkable green roofs I have ever visited. The roofs are all about 15 years old. In pure construction terms they could be considered ‘not very good’. However what a constructor or conventional green roofer might consider ‘poor’ installation, an ecologist or botanist would marvel at. I certainly did.

Although I have written about the Moos Filtration Plant green roof – one of the green roof wonders of the world – today I paid my 6th visit to the roof. One of the roofs was built in 1913 and the others in the ’50s. With over 148 flowering plants and grasses and 14 species [...]

Some recent pictures of bumblebees on a green roof in central London. What was interesting was how the white-tailed bumblebees seemed to favour the poppies and the red-tailed favoured the cornflowers.