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Green roofs on Garden Buildings
Everybody these days is concerned about our environment and the
impact our actions have on it. We have been actively involved in
various environmentally sound projects over the years, with our
last one being a Mega Beehive sponsored by the Government; this
will be the subject of a later article. Due to our connections
and concerns, we have looked into the impact of our environment
surrounding our specialist field of garden buildings.
When any form of building work takes place the environment that
was there is substantially destroyed, losing valuable supplies
for birds, insect life and many other small creatures as well as
losing the benefit of CO2 depleting organic plants.
There are numerous building projects across the world that
addresses this issue with the provision of an organic roofing
material. We are now introducing this into our range of garden
buildings. Admittedly, on our range of sheds this possibly does
not have a great impact on what was destroyed and subsequently
replaced as regards the environment, but when it comes to our
larger timber garages or our log cabins this can help greatly.
We are using plants from the Crassulaceau family of plants
called sedums. These are grown on matting that contains the
plants and incorporates a live time of substance to grow from.
This matting can then be incorporated into our sheds,
summerhouses or log cabins - in fact any garden building.
The matting in effect produces a living carpet and is a very low
maintenance product when compared to other shed roofing
materials. The plants are matured for about 18 months before the
matting is used to give a strong and versatile material. It
includes a varied mixture of flowering sedums and looks
attractive on your shed or log cabin all year round; it never
needs mowing or dead heading and of course attracts a variety of
wildlife.
Sedum is from a Latin word "Sedo" which means to sit and
probably refers to the fact that these plants sit on walls,
ledges and any areas with poor soil and little moisture, ideally
suited for our sheds. There are about 400 varieties which vary
in height and colour and they all flower at different points
across the season giving your log cabin a stunning finish.
Sedums are
very tolerant of drought conditions although they are
not drought proof, they do need some moisture. They love
sunshine like many other plants and thrive in full sunlight,
again these are ideally suited to garden buildings or other
building projects.
We have a number of options if you are considering using this
roofing material. Due to the increased weight, it is necessary
to have a building that can withstand the added load. We can
manufacture to virtually any design of shed or summerhouse and
build the roof strong enough to accept the matting, it is only
usually necessary to incorporate additional trusses and we use
19mm T&G boarding instead of the standard 12mm. For our log
cabin ranges we provide additional trusses within the roof, due
to the standard board thickness of our log cabin roofs it is not
necessary to increase this as they are designed to accept tiles
rather than standard felt and are also able to accept insulation
materials. We are also putting together a kit for customers who
would like to retro-fit the roofing system to allow them to
strengthen the roof enough to accept it.
Installation onto a shed roof is relatively straight forward,
the garden building is first felted with a good quality heavy
duty felt, a layer of plastic is then applied preventing the
sedums from growing into the felt. Absorbent matting is placed
over the plastic to hold water for the plants and then the plant
matting is fixed to that, giving the final roof covering. At the
edge of the roof we use pre-drilled metal strips to contain the
matting to prevent slippage and allow for drainage, we then
finish with wooden bargeboards. The following months and years
will see the plants growing over the side of these boards and it
really does look stunning when in flower.
If you would like further details or advice on this stunning
roofing system for your shed, log cabin or summerhouse then
please visit our website at www.taylorsgardenbuildings.co.uk
About the author:
Taylors Garden buildings are suppliers and manufacturers of
garden sheds, summerhouse and log cabins since 1953. We
specialise in Bespoke projects. www.taylorsgardenbuildings.co.uk
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