Gardening on a Rooftop

When you live in an apartment in a city, you do not have the option to head to your back yard and grow a beautiful garden. This does not mean that you cannot have a beautiful garden of your own. One common option is to have an indoor garden, which is great when you're indoors, but is not the same as having your own outdoor garden.

For the lucky people out there that have access to a rooftop, you have another option: you can grow your garden on your roof. While your garden may be something simple, a great example of an elaborate rooftop garden can be seen in the final scene of the movie "Just Like Heaven." This guide will not give you help on growing that kind of garden, but it will help you grow a beautiful garden.

Your rooftop is not regular soil, or even like indoor planting. On the roof, your plants are subjected to the worst possible conditions, with temperatures getting up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and wind blowing almost all year long. Since you are on the roof, your plants will receive no shade all day. Make sure you get plants that require lots of sun, since too much sun could kill anything else. You also need to make sure that your soil has plenty of nutrients. Unlike most plants which you can get away with only fertilizing every now and then, you will have to regularly fertilize or your plants will die.

The most important thing that you do for you plants is make sure they get plenty of water. It is absolutely required that you set up an automatic watering system for your rooftop plants. In the summer they will require watering two times a day. Anything less, and your plants could easily die.

One final thing you need to remember is that these plants will receive constant wind, so you need to either find a way to protect them from the wind, or find plants that are wind resistant. The key to rooftop growing is really getting the right plants and giving them the proper care. It will be difficult, but with a little work you can have a great garden that will offer a reprieve from the city lights.