The containers along the roofline are delightful! Inspiring! Are those wave petunias? Thanks for taking us along with you on your trip. :)

What LOVELY Pictures! Thanks for sharing!

First... what a beautiful old house! Second... those definitely look like wave petunias on the roof. Which brings a few questions to mind.

1. How in the heck do they get the pots up there?
2. How come the waves look like they are thriving? My baskets of waves (and any of the spreading petunias) always need care every single day. Lots of water requirements and weekly feeding, if not weak-feeding at every watering.

I do think the wave extreme watering demands might be due to the root bound condition of the pots when you get them from the greenhouse, even though I potted them up to a larger pot I didn't do anything to relieve the root bound problem.

I have seen pictures of houses like this in my magazines and always wondered how on earth they accomplish this amazing decorating feat!

Beautiful pics!
But how the heck do they ever maintain them?

Eliza Ann

I always knew those Victorians had their minds in the gutter!

Fab photos.
Guess I'll have to actually take my camera and take some pictures this week, but the weather makes me soooo lazy. Yeah, that's it.

Wow, beautiful house and great flowers! I would NEVER have thought to put flowers on the roof! Wonder how they hold up in the heat up there? Mine are wilting and I have to water them twice a day down on the ground!

:)
Dee
Still groaning from Cady's pun, lol!

I also wondred how they maintained those beautiful flowers. In one of the pictures that I did not post
you could see the container they were in and also a water hose sticking up in the gutter, letting me think they have some sort of drip water system.....This area is full of trees for plenty of shade....but it looks like the high temps we have had lately would dry them out.....these pictures were taken Fri july 22nd....a very hot day here..Sat was 100 plus, Sun. 102 at 4pm....around 4pm today a front came thru, brought alittle rain and the temp right now is 75...I have a sweatshirt on....the rain and cooler temps will make the farmers happy....Shirl

They would have to have some continuous drip irrigation up there with some method of fertilizing. Waves would never survive without it especially in the temps you guys get! :) But...boy...to live in that house I would even climb a ladder daily to water them!! ;)

The way those large windows open onto the roof -which isn't pitched too steeply- wonder whether someone walks out the window to water them? I wouldn't, but you never know.

Also, there are those extra lengthy watering wands, and maybe they have one that reaches.

Sure is beautiful. And unusual.

Those are really nice, thanks for sharing! A bit related... the current Reader's Digest features rooftop gardens entitled "Garden City". They're pretty! I didn't know they exist, I wish we'd taken pictures the last time we were in Chicago. Maube I can do something similar with our flat southwest style roof.

very nice looking.
but it cant be good for your roof?
Mary

Living in a dense northside Chicago neighborhood, I have zero yard and my entire garden resides on the roof. The garage roof or what I now call my veranda, had been reinforced to interior bathroom standards to hold the weight of the heaviest containers mid span. This year I expanded onto the main roof where there is a lot more room but can't be reinforced making things a bit more complicated. The main rooftop gets sunrise to sunset sun so things dry out very quickly up there. You'll notice, in one of the pics in the link provided below, I had to construct a weird contraption to reduce the weight load of a 20 sq ft. wildflower planter.

There's a house around here that placed a flower bed along the ridge line of a pitched roof using low maintenance plants. Great idea if you can make sure the weight of the planters don't collapse the roof and you have some kind of irrigation system set up so you don't have to climb up there every day.

Here is a link that might be useful: Some thumbnails of my rooftop gardens

mea2214 you're rooftop garden is amazing! btw, what were you using as containers? I'm not sure I id them correctly - plastic buckets, wood boxes inside plastic crates? Do you put drain holes & catch trays at the bottom?

I use a lot of 5 gallon plastic buckets that I pick up in the alleys when I find them and drill a bunch of 1/2" holes in the bottom. In a pinch I'll buy them at Menards. They're compact, deep, and can support a variety of big plants and herbs. I also use milk crates by lining them with 1/4" plywood (and some are old 1x pine wood cut to size) that I coat with polyurethane. The plywood rises 4" above the milk crates making the entire container about 1 sq ft. and 16" deep. The wood is cut precisely so that it fits together perfectly in the milk crate and then I use a coarse mulch on the bottom to keep the dirt from falling out. I like the milk crates because they're square and they fit snug along the edges of the roof wasting no space. I also have a bunch of 22" cedar planters for big things and for the tomatoes I found these big utility tubs on sale at Menards for $3 each and drilled holes in the bottom. There are no catch trays and everything has drain holes. The excess water just drains away on the rubber roof and down the downspouts.

The wildflower planters are big (8'x2.5'x12"deep) and I made them by building a frame of 2X4s for the base and 2x2s for the sides. Then I cover the frame with a skin of 1/4" plywood. The frame deals with all the stress of the dirt so no need for thicker plywood. The entire box is primed inside and out and then coated with a Porch and Floor oil based paint I got from Home Depot which is extremely good and covers in one coat.

That's about it. I started on this 3 years ago and add more containers every year. A couple of days ago one of my neighbors set out ten 5 gallon buckets in the alley for me to pick up so I have a good start on next year's expansion.

BTW: To protect the rubber roof, wherever there is a plant cluster I lay another layer of rubber material and place the planters on a piece of wood so the summer heat cause them to melt into the roof creating a leak.

mea2214
That's impressive! You sure manage to get a lot of stuff growing on that roof. What does it look like from the ground? Do you have vines or creepers draping over the edge?

That's disgusting. Okay, I'm just jealous! lol
I'll take that house anyday!

Glorious home. Very creative plantings.

-Ron-