Ginger,
Here is my method.
1. Staple a heavy mil black plastic to the roof.
2. Staple landscape fabric (rougher side up) on top of the plastic.
3. Now staple chicken wire on top keeping it loose and sort of scrunch it up slightly. Allow the chicken wire to extend about 4" off the roof edges and then bend it upwards along the edges to form a 'planting bed'.
4. Now, figure out where you can strip a lawn using a lawn stripper. Place two layers of the lawn strips, one on top of the other, grass side down in the planting bed.
5. Allow the grass to dry out for several weeks or more. This gives you the 'mat' effect.
6. Plant sedums.

Note: Of course the chicken wire will rust out. But, by the time this happens the sedums should have grown and knitted together holding all in place. But, you may find in a few years that it is necessary to tack a piece of treated wood along the bottom roof edges to keep all in place. This can be done from the gitto if you wish.

Nandina-

Thank you so much. Is there anything horticultural that you don't know how to do?? You are a gardening wizard! :)

Thanks for sharing your knowledge again and again.

Best,
Ginger

Not to end this thread: other ideas and experiences are still welcome and anticipated . . .

Ginger, I replied to your post on the Homesteading forum.
Kay

Hi Ginger

I've been thinking about this too, but using herbs, not sedums. Sounds like Nandina has a great solution there and I'd like to give it a go. I'd only change one thing - it's very wet here, so I'd glue the plastic and landscape fabric down rather than stapling them. All I need now is a suitable roof...

Love Linda

Hello, Linda!
I took a look at your bio page. If you have nearly all shade, I would guess you would need to find a roof top to plant with herbs elsewhere! Do you see any green roofs in your part of the world on everyday garden sheds, gazebos, cottages and the like?
Thank you for replying.
Ginger

Hi Ginger
yes, my herb roof would need to be at my allotments, which are lovely and sunny - that is, when the sun shines here (which only seems to be when I am at work!!) It is my home garden (just 9 feet by 15) which is so shady.

We see very feew green roofs here, it seems such a shame. They are very popular in other parts of Europe, and are starting to be built in the south of england, but as usual, we are a bit behind in the north.

All the more reason for me to do it of course...

I have heard of people using rockwool insulation to plant green roofs. But it isn't very sustainable.
Eric in Japan

I'm sure I read about how to do this somewhere. Maybe Real Goods Solar Living Sourcebook? I don't know if you would have access to it over there, though.

I would also be tempted to use heavy pond liner rather than black plastic, if available. If you lose your roof, you lose everything.

Pennsylvania State University seems to be doing some work on it (link below).

Across the pond, there is
http://www.greenroof.co.uk/html/main5.htm

I believe 'green roof' is a British term, so try googling
PLANTED+ROOF and see what you get.

Sue

Here is a link that might be useful: Pennsylvania State University

Would a project such as this be adivsable for the roof of a dog house? We are looking to get a dog house for our puppy while we or the children are outside playing she will have her own private retreat. We have such hot summers I was wondering if this would help to reduce the temps in her house?
Thanks
Christina

I am designing on of these now for a home,, however my roof is set up already set up , since the home is almost,flat roofed and being built into the hillside,,
one thing that I can say ,, is no staples or nails,, this will create possible leaks into your building,, there are several ways to go about this, it also depends on the amount of slope to your building,, also you really need to check out how much weight your roof structure can hold, these babies can get heavy,,,
on our roof structure, the epdm is our waterproof membrane,, over that we will have a second lighter layer, just for added protection, we also have foam board going under walkways for maintenance,, from that layer we are useing a perlite product, a layer of straw, followed by a 3 inch layer of custom mixed soil with some water retention gel added,,, the plants which are going to be mixed sedums and a layer of bark mulch to blend into the landscape,,
good luck with yours
GB

Ginger,

If you got your green roof going this year, I'd love to know how it went!

Thanks.
JKD

mclaw roofing ltd will be happy to advise and supply materials we have used on commercial projects tried and tested. we know that keen gardners like us want to do the greening themselves. thats why we have started to supply the waterproofing and greening materials separately for residential clients with instructions. the finished saturated weight of our mats is 56kg per m2 which is fine for most structures

Here is a link that might be useful: green roof supplies

Thats a really relivent site, its very professional looking and I look foreward to browsing it, unfortunately it is against forum rules to postadds for your own product or company, so I think the prudent thing to do would be to report your own error to the moderators using the report button and pleeed your case, if you report yourself they may let your post stay, or they may pitch it, its important that the forum not be overrun with self advertisement, it hurts the integrity of the information provided.

Now, about what was said a year or so ago, I think its a bad idea to send staples through the black plastic without puting something like butyl rubber water shield on top, any puncture is an oportunity for water to work through, thats why the part of the shingles that5 you put a nail through gets another shingle ontop of it. Perhaps you could just lay one piece of plastic or rubber over the whole thing and glue it on, then run chiken wire over the whole thing from one slope to the other and rely on the tensil strength to hold it all together.

I was thinking the same thing about staples/nails- Brendan, but I don't have any experience in green roofing, so I didn't say anything.

Okay, so we have our green roof all in except for a couple of planters on our overhangs,,collected all the sedums we could last year and had to finish with others this year,, what we have in place is a commercial building system roof, which uses epdm to finish off, since we did not like the suggested toss gravel on the roof and let it ride, I did the green roof, have to admit ours varies from the site above, when we planted ours I wanted patterns so what we did was first make sure everything was well sealed and ready, the littles puncture will leak so if you do the nails or staples you must place a patch over them,, next we laid another layer of blue foam on ours for added protection because we do have a problem with the deer jumping onto it,,after that I custom missed a very light weight soil, drew out patterns on the roof,, from there I used a combination of barks to do intricate designs,and outlines to emphasize the sedums,, I layed in 4 inches of soil , the original 3 did not seem to be enough,, then planted with various sedums based on their foliage colors basically creating a large mosaic,these are beginning to fill in this growing season,, so hopefully in the next couple of years it fully fills in ,, right now it is still nice to look at however because it is complimented by the barks,,
gb

Just thought I would do an update on this one, Our home is coming out in the March/April 2008 Natural Home Magazine this month, I believe.It was an extremely sunny day so the lighting was a struggle,I had hopes they would have a few better shots of the roof, but hey girls gotta take what she gets huh,LOL,, they actually did a wonderful job.Believe the articles name is Good neighbors.For those interested in seeing a garden roof up and going.

Wow, gardenbutt, that's terrific!
Could you post a few pictures here?
I'm wanting to do a green roof on a garden shed, but don't think I can use sedums because our winters are sometimes wet enough to rot them.

Wonderful article. Great use of resources; very nicely done. It is online:

http://www.naturalhomemagazine.com/multimedia/image-gallery.aspx?id=3944&seq=0

Thanks, it has been a great adventure.Straw boss thanks for putting up the link,, uh duh
The house itself has a life of its own, this year we welcomed a camara crew for a green television show.Not allowed to name names yet. LOl,,,goofy part of that happens to be we do not watch tv, we own a small one for the kids and grandkids to watch dvds.LOL

Another quick note that should show more of the green roof,
The green discovery channel will be airing our home on Worlds Greenest Homes using the name the Happy house.November 14 at 6:00 eastern.I believe its supposed to rotate through the month.
We do not know what it is going to look like but the green roof was a biggy for them to be filming.
M

for planting herbs and other edible plants, you are usually talking about an intensive green roof, which requires soil of usually minimum 8 inches.

Before beginning this (and, to be honest I'd recommend for all green roof type projects) its good to get a structural engineer to check out the roof surface to make sure your structure can handle the extra weight of water in the soil or substrate. Usually not a problem - but its always smart to prepare for the possible 'worst case' when we're talking about your home...

All best,
D

Here is a link that might be useful: seedums for green roofing