Plants wouldn’t naturally choose to grow on a rooftop. This is a completely different experience from designing a garden on the ground, where lots of plants happily grow.

There are several key things to consider: how much weight can your roof bare? will they survive their environment? and will they get too big for the space?

Whether you’ve downsized from an expansive formal garden, or this is your first patch of outside space, designing a rooftop garden is the perfect opportunity to be creative and adventurous!

It’s believed that the main obstacle that gets in a resident’s way, is the lack of boldness and ambition. It takes confidence to garden in a seemingly unconventional space. This is why we’re here to provide you with a guide to designing a successful roof garden…

1. Pick the right plants

In contrast to planting in your back garden, you can’t rely on the ground as a source of water for your plants when gardening on a roof. Your plants will solely rely on the weather. Depending on your climate, your best bet may be to opt for drought resistant plants.

2. Bring the inside-out

Indoor/outdoor living has been huge in recent years. During the pandemic, we were all pretty much stuck inside, craving the outside. Products such as outdoor rugs and a vast variety of outdoor furniture have made the image of mouldy plastic chairs a thing of the past. Treat your space like you would a living room. Think about adding sofas, lighting and a coffee table for an extra room with a view.

3. Allude to a larger space

One of our key distinguishers at Sky-House is our advocation of ‘low maintenance living’. This means a lifestyle with more time for you, and less time for maintaining a property and all that goes with it. This is why we don’t burden our homes with expansive outdoor space. We keep things simple. Despite this, you still might want to allude to grandeur. You can achieve this by blurring the edges of your space with planting and greenery. Outdoor mirrors are also great for creating a sense of depth.

4. Access and safety

We’re not trying to be boring, or crush your dreams, but we wouldn’t be doing our job if there wasn’t a point made about access and safety. The main point here is to think about how much weight your roof can bare. A 3-bed terrace HT-1 roof can approximately bare ½ a tonne of evenly distributed weight. There’s also fire safety to consider here, and it’s important to point out that any open flames that could cause sparks might punctuate the membrane beneath the decking of sky-house rooftops.