Green roofs for garden rooms

A guest post from Cosy Garden Rooms on one of the most popular features of garden offices and garden rooms. 

A green roof is a living roof, that is partially or completely covered with plants and vegetation. There are many different types of plant that can be used including meadow flowers, sedum, moss and herbs. Turf roofs are also an option but are not often used because they are heavy and need a lot of maintenance otherwise they become messy. 

All green roofs are made up of multiple layers, including a waterproofing membrane, growing medium, and plants. At Cosy Garden Rooms, we use sedum roofs in our garden room designs. A green roof is a generic term for any living roof, while a sedum roof specifically features low-growing succulents, a type of plant species. We use sedum-based living roofs because they are low-maintenance, durable, and can provide year-round visual interest.

Benefits of green and sedum roofs include

• Thermal and acoustic insulation
• Supports a wonderful ecosystem for birds and insects
• Offers a softer, more natural look compared to traditional roofing materials, especially when viewed from higher levels 
• Green roofs, including sedum roofs, act as natural sponges by absorbing and retaining rainwater, reducing runoff, preventing flooding, filtering pollutants, and easing the strain on drainage systems around garden rooms

When installing a green or sedum roof, one of the most important considerations is the structural strength of the garden room. Green roofs are heavier than standard roofing materials, especially when wet, as they hold both plants and substrate. 

While green roofs in general may require some maintenance, sedum roofs are particularly low-maintenance, making them a popular choice. Sedum plants are drought-tolerant, needing little to no watering once established, and they don’t require frequent feeding. A light application of fertilizer once a year is typically sufficient to keep the plants healthy. Additionally, sedum roofs don’t need mowing, making them an easy-care option for homeowners. Occasional weeding or trimming might be necessary, but overall, they are a practical, fuss-free choice for anyone looking to incorporate a living roof into their garden room.

A green roof is an additional cost. Your garden room will function perfectly well without one. However, people like them, and they are becoming popular. As a basic guide price, they cost £50 per square meter plus trims and fitting if the roof is strong enough for the additional weight.

Pictured below is a green roof delivery.

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The Shedworker's Bookshelf - The DIY Guide to Green & Living Roofs

This is one for your virtual bookshelf as it's only available as a pdf (though I suppose you could print it out and bind it if you really wanted). Two of the UK's leading proponents of green roofs have teamed up to produce The DIY Guide to Green & Living Roofs, a guide aimed at individuals with a Do-It-Yourself inclination along with those having trouble persuading local contractors to take up the challenge of installing a green roof on their behalf.

Published by Dusty Gedge of Livingroofs.org and John Little of The Grass Roof Company, features details on how to convert existing sheds to take a green roof as well as instructions on how to build a small green roof from scratch. It is available in eBook formats at www.livingroofs.org/DIY_Guide_intro.html for £11.65.

"Over the last few years we have both been inundated with phone calls and emails from people keen to build their own green roofs or to convert their sheds and existing roofs to green roofs," says Dusty. "As enthusiasts it is difficult not to reply to emails and answer phone calls but we both struggle to keep up so we decided to write the guide to try and give people a starting point. Big green roofs on large developments are one thing but there is also a huge appetite out there at the micro level. This guide hopes to meet that appetite, not only in the UK but also in North America, Australia and throughout Europe."

John adds:

"We also want to challenge the 'IKEA' approach to green roofs. You don’t have to go out and buy a system. You can source all the individual components yourself, hopefully locally, and create your own unique green roof. That is the second point of the guide. When I started out 10 years ago I just wanted to build green roofs. There was no information out there to help me so I had to learn through experience only. Every small building I have built has had a green roof installed and over 10 years you realize that it can be quite simple. At the end of the day Dusty and I just want to see more green roofs and we hope this guide helps add to what is already happening out there on the larger scale."

John and Dusty are also planning to run workshops based on the guide throughout the UK over the next year and hope to feature many of the projects stimulated by the guide on their websites.

Ancaya Green Roof Garden Shed

If you're thinking about putting a green roof on your garden office, then one of your earliest ports of call should be the excellent Greenroofs.com. Above is a good example of what can be done, the Ancaya Green Roof Garden Shed where you can find plenty of details of its construction (essentially a 112 sq.ft roof with a slope of 58.3%) by Living Roofs. Here's what they say:

"The green roof not only decreases the quantity of rainwater runoff from the garden shed roof, it also provides habitat for insects, birds, and butterflies, is an aesthetically pleasing addition to the urban backyard, and maintains cool temperatures inside the building creating a retreat from the summer heat. "

Spotted by Shedworking Scout Bill Kratz.

Green Roof Shelters

Adding a living roof to your garden office started to become popular a couple of years ago and now is almost a mainstream option offered by garden building suppliers. But essentially you still buy a shed and then decide whether or not to go for a green roof. Now, Green Roof Shelters (whose team includes green roof experts featured previously on Shedworking including Dusty Gedge and John Little) are providing a range of ready-planted shelters which come all done and dusted and ready to crane into position for a variety of uses such as outdoor classrooms, exhibition pavilions and of course shedworking.

The buildings themselves are our old friends recycled shipping containers and optional extras include a rather attractive habitat wall and special bespoke habitats for birds and bats. Everything in the process is as recycled/salvaged/ecofriendly as possible.

Pictured above is an example in situ, the pavilion at The London Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust’s new Rain Garden designed by Nigel Dunnett.
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How to put a green roof on your shed

A nice little piece by Pippa Greenwood in the Daily Mirror looks at how to put a living green roof on your shed or garden office and has useful tips and pointers such as:

1. Check the roof is strong enough to bear the weight of a green roof and that the shed itself is up to it. If in doubt, you’ll need to install a sturdier framework
2. Make sure the roof is adequately waterproof. If not, you’ll need to upgrade this or install an extra layer
3. Consult your local council’s planning department just in case it needs to give permission.

Greentide: 'brown roof' garden office

London-based Greentide is run by shedworker David Whyte and supplies garden rooms as well as landscape design services. I particularly like this example which has a 'brown roof', something in my ignorance I've never come across, but which David explains nicely:

"The room was built to be an office and family chill out space, so it is a destination away from the house. The building is visible from the house but the view of it is partly obscured by the landscaping and planting inbetween, and you have to go through this to get to it. It is a really great space because it has basic creature comforts (cosy), is a 'proper' room, and has a lovely view over my veg garden. Its location and aspect are a part of the overall garden design layout. The footprint of the room was planned six years ago so it has been built into mature planting. This has helped the room fit or blend into the garden rather than standing out."Intensive and extensive green roofs are fully planted in/on a substrate intended to support those plants, this substrate being a version of the soil plants normally grow in. A brown roof is more like the waste land that 'weeds' seem to do so well on, but the 'weeds' are often plants that are beneficial to and attract insects and wildlife. Being a low nutrient substrate the brown roof is also better suited to growing wildflowers. I am going to wait and see what self seeds on the roof, and I will sow some wildflower seed up there as well. The roof is pitched, the rear third being cedar shingles (low visual impact for the neighbours) with all rainwater runoff collected into butts. Any rainwater runoff from the 'brown' side of the roof goes into a soakaway, a length of land drainage tubing running out across the veg garden.

"So the brown/living roof fits into the whole garden plan because it is an environment that attracts the wildlife you want, to feed on the wildlife you don't, or at least to be a part of that cycle. I hope it will do its bit in helping me be an organic gardener. Another benefit of this type of green roof is that being a lot thicker than a sedum roof for example, it should provide better insulation for the room below."

Green roof pioneer Nigel Dunnett dies at 63

The Shedworking team was sorry to hear of the death over the weekend of horticulturalist and writer Nigel Dunnett. We have featured several of Nigel's Chelsea Flower Show creations over the years, and reviewed his marvellous book Small Green Roofs which featured many garden offices and other shedlike atmospheres when it came out in 2011 from Timber Press (sadly it's now out of print but still available secondhand) with helpful practical 'how to' sections. The green roof movement and biodiversity was one of his passions, establishing the first trials of them in the UK, and writing what is 

We are sad to hear of the passing of Nigel Dunnett who was a key figure in UK Green Roof research and teaching, and wrote what is believed to be the first book in English on the subject, with Noel Kingsbury, Planting Green Roofs and Living Walls, also a Timber Press publication.

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The Grass Roof Company

Joining Garden History Girl on our list of top sites discovered in 2008 (maybe there should be some annual Shedworking awards?) is The Grass Roof Company run by brothers John and Robert Little. We all know why green roofs are so great - eco-friendly, great for insulation, nice to look at - and TimeOut even suggests they are one of the 2008 gardening trends. The site is full of the most marvellous pictures of living roofs/green roofs including numerous shedlike atmospheres and I can't recommend browsing through it enough - on your way around, look out in particular for the summer house at Orsett Heath, the posh shed in Shenfield, the One Tree Hill Shelter and the Turf Room Garden Room. John adds that, in collaboration with Dusty Gedge of Livingroofs.org he is in the process of producing a PDF sheet with practical info on building your own green roof from scratch. The company also run green roof building courses.

Green Roof Shed of the month

The Green Roof Shed of the Month slot at Green Roof Training features the work of the admirable Michael 'rammed earth Eco Shed' Thompson. It's well worth a read if you're thinking of installing one on your own garden office, especially since Michael recounts how he solved a major problem when it started raining... Here's an excerpt:

For a bit of variety and to attract a wider range of wildlife we also planted grass, wild flowers and most recently thyme – all of which are taking longer to get established and need more care but will hopefully prove to have been worth the effort by this time next year.

Quite a talking point are a couple of old horses skulls up there (each with a neat bullet hole in the top) that we salvaged whilst cleaning out a redundant cess pit in the garden which we now use for rainwater harvesting. Along with some gnarly decaying logs Bridget has used them to create a ‘skull-pture’ which will hopefully provide the perfect habitat for all sorts of mini beasts!’

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Modular green roof

Shedworkers will know that there's no more ideal spot for a green roof than a garden office. Here's a great new idea from Liveroof whereby essentially you buy already good to go (recyclable) modules of fully grown green roof to save you the hassle of actually growing it yourself. It's quite heavy so you'd need to be a bit careful and check on your roofload capacity.
Via Treehugger

How to look after the green roof on your garden office

A green roof on your shedworking spot is a lovely feature but while it's low maintenance, it's not no maintenance. Rotunda Roundhouses has a short but useful post on this very subject (feeding, clearing away debris, etc) which is well worth a quick look. Here's a timely snippet:

Sedum roof during Autumn and Winter 
Please remove all fallen leaves and twigs within 2 weeks as these can suffocate your plants. Unblock any surrounding gutters / ensure all the draining outlets are working well. Please do not feed the sedum roof during the winter.

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Shed Box of Delights: Green roof container garden office

Turning shipping containers into garden offices and buildings was flavour of the month half a dozen years ago and there are some signs that it is on trend again. The Grass Roof Company is among those putting forward some lovely designs, the one above built from two used containers and clad in larch featuring a wood burning stove. The company supplies them straight to site with green roof and habitat walls. Here's what they say about them:

We love used freight containers, they have already spent at least 10 years at sea, they are immensely strong and versatile. A perfect base to fix green roofs and habitat walls. Take the side away and you have a shelter for interpretation, cycle store, outdoor classroom or stage? A truly sustainable building, they can move with you or sell on complete!

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The RHS Garden Retreat

Brand new from The Posh Shed Company is The RHS Garden Retreat model, developed with the Royal Horticultural Society and indeed can be seen at RHS Garden Wisley at Battleston Hill in Surrey. It's fully insulated and double-glazed with a covered porch (with integral seat), attractive cedar shingled roof and three full height windows, but the Shedworking staff's eye was particularly drawn to its vaulted green roof section.

Here's what they say about it:

"The construction of the roof means that this design has the unique capability to have a living roof planted on top whilst at the same time having cedar shingles around the edge to give that rustic feel. The cedar shingles are blue grade (top quality) the roof pitch of the cedar section of the roof is 45 degrees. Internally the roof is vaulted giving as much of the external height into the internal area and creating a feeling of space."

There's a particularly good introductory offer on at the moment to the first 10 customers to order.

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Garden office green roof

Green roofs suddenly became very popular on garden offices about 10 years ago and then interest appeared to die down a little, although recently we've had a lot of queries about how to install them and our social media team have noticed increasing levels of interest online too. A green roof is a win-win feature, and this image from Green Roofs Direct shows how marvellous they can look a couple of years after installation. The company's YouTube page also features some useful, and not too long, videos on the subject.

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Turf your garden office

I've written on the site and in The Shed magazine before about having a green roof on your garden office/shed, but I'm particularly excited about these selfwatering, Korean velvet grass Green Roof Tiles from Toyota as featured in today's post on the addictably browsable inhabitat. They're light, cheap and easy to install and maintain, rather like whacking a rug on top of your roof.

bsq design: shipping container offices

bsq design convert and modify shipping containers into garden offices and other shedlike structures. They walk the talk too and have recently converted a container to be their own mobile, off-grid office (pictured above and below) which they've bespoked to include solar panels, a green roof (does anybody not have a green roof nowadays?) and roof-top deck.Via MoCo Loco

Jane Perrone's green roof

Jane Perrone is the Guardian newspaper's gardening editor and earlier this year built a garden office with a rather nice green roof. She is updating her Flickr page with regular updates (her aim is a weekly photo) to show how it changes through the course of a year. For more details nip over to her blog Horticultural which also contains full details of the roof planting.
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Rammed Earth Eco-Shed

There will be a whole new category in the 2009 Shed of the Year competition for eco-sheds and here is one of the frontrunners, the Rammed Earth Eco-Shed at Potter Heigham, Norfolk, owned by joiner Michael Thompson which will also eventually have a green roof. It's a 66m2 building with a maximum height of 2.8m and the budget is a titchy £2,700 (at the moment Michael is on target to hit this). Here's what he says about it at the Readersheds.co.uk site:

"I chose earth as a construction material for several reasons, it has excellent thermal qualities, good soundproofing and best of all it's dirt cheap... in fact its free!!! Also it's a low impact construction method as the materials can usually be sourced very locally, most of the earth came from the footprint of the building itself. The timbers which will make up the roof will be from the local builders merchants and the sedums that will occupy the green roof have been cultivated from soft cuttings."

There's more construction information and an interview about the build at the Rammed Earth is for Everyone blog. And here is a nice slideshow on YouTube.Via Shedblog

Green roofs onto existing pitch roof

Green roofs are becoming very popular now but on the Green Building Forum there is an interesting discussion going on answering this question which has particular relevance for shedworkers, how practical is it to turn a traditional pitched roof into a extensive green roof? One of the posters, Tom Foster, also points to some interesting photos of Norwegian examples of just this, pictured above and below.

Lovely garden office green roof

A little something to brighten up the start of your new lockdown. Here's what the owner, consultant planner and architectural designer Ian Gunter-Jones says about it: "My first green roof on top of the studio in our previous cottage garden. Chantry row, Aldbury. We planted the roof with sedum plugs, but I made the substrate a little too rich and so the wildflowers soon took over, a happy accident."
 

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