Issue 179 looked at five roof gardens.

Both London gardens proved to have the most relevance to me.  Roof garden #2 is located in South London and was designed by photographer and owner Suzie Gibbons with help from garden designers Mhairi Clutson and Julie Wize. The garden is over five years old and uses grasses, sedum, lavender, daisies, fleabane and verbena for colour and texture. Galvanized tubs and planters are used effectively – there are even birch in large containers. This is a garden that isn’t trying too hard. It looks comfortable, usable and modern.

My favourite, hands down.

Garden #5, also in London, was designed by Sara Jane Rothwell. It’s a ‘prairie-style’ garden, just over three years old with sedum, penstemons, poppies, herbs, grass and yarrow. It has a soft pinky-cream glow to it and looks like it would stand up to the hot sun and wind. But the use of plastic fencing mesh was surprising, I’ll admit. Might be tricky getting that design element approved in Canada.

Roof garden #1 is in Paris, and was designed in 2004 by Arnaud Maurieres and Eric Ossart. It looks at first glance like it might be a little claustrophobic, with massive Miscanthus plantings – it would be pretty interesting to be in the middle of this garden in a heavy wind. The article notes rudbeckia and aster have proven to be tough enough to hold their own, year after year in the garden. This is the garden pictured on the cover of the magazine.

Roof garden #3 and #4 each have their own unique features. Garden #3 in New York is owned by green roof designers, so part of the large space is used to cultivate plants for their projects like lupins, echinacea and coreopsis. They also have trees, grass(?), roses, a kitchen garden and chicken coop – it’s intense and the largest of the gardens featured. Garden #4, designed by Adam Shephard, is a sampling of different elements and materials. This one is more like a show room for ideas than a garden.

The requirements of a roof garden are complex and more often than not, require the help of professionals to design and build. But with planning and a little local plant knowledge, a balcony gardener can successfully take the ideas and concepts illustrated in this magazine and simplify, scale down, adjust and apply to container-based gardening. I know I’m going to give it a try.

The troughs should be sleeping under a cover of snow but some of the plants are still green; the troughs haven’t frozen in yet. I’ve actually been giving them a little bit of water – pretending it might be rain. In the downtown area and along the river the poplar trees are starting to set a few buds. And comments on un-winter weather have been noted by others down east and across the border.

The local bunny in the park, who has mostly turned white is out and about regularly. It can probably find a few sprouts of green or a compost pile or two that isn’t frozen.

But really, we all know it’s just a matter of time before the cold rolls in. Although it was 9˚C yesterday.

Pictured below are four of the five plants I grew in 2011. King of Denmark Spinach, Greek Cress, Gerard’s Cress and Pepper Cress. The fifth plant I grew was New Zealand Spinach (Tetragonia tetragonioides), which unfortunately didn’t set seed within my growing season.

I haven’t had a lot of success growing spinach, but King of Denmark Spinach (Spinacea oleracea) pictured above (top row) seemed to work well on the balcony. This variety germinated really well and produced for a number of weeks before setting seed. It’s an early summer spinach, with thick, dark green, tasty leaves. Its seed was clustered along the stem. The seed clusters were prickly, rock hard and a little tough to break apart – quite the armour-plated protection built into this plant.

Greek Cress (Lepidium sativum), pictured above in the second row also germinated well and grew into a container full of thick spicy leaves. It produced a healthy amount of seed. The tiny rust coloured, almost kidney shaped seeds were enclosed in tissue-thin pods that were easily dispersed by the wind. Peppery Gerard’s Cress pictured above (third row) and Pepper Cress (bottom row) both produced a very similar looking seed pod to the Greek Cress although quantities were notably smaller.

Although I grew each of these plants in separate clay containers, all of the Cress produced a leafy, bright green plant that would be easy to combine in a container with herbs or annuals. And if you are interested in learning more about saving seeds, Seed Living has a list of 10 resources and the Seed Sanctuary provides a great overview to get you started.

Tastings well underway. Cheers to a new gardening year…

The glass gardens are getting interesting. I did a little moss collecting in BC a couple of weeks ago. On my parent’s property there are a lot of different types. Near the wood pile, moss is growing on strips of bark. On the paths and under the fruit trees the moss is shallow-rooted in the sandy soil. I’m still trying to ID the little bunches that I have now set under glass but I think I have some little pieces of feather moss, rock cap moss and juniper haircap moss. I also collected a few small twigs that are covered with a smoky grey and bright yellow lichen.

I captured a ladybug that was camping out on the sliding glass doors in the apartment and placed her under one of the glass cloches. Other than this one insect and a few worms, the glass gardens are amazingly bug-free. I’m assuming it’s just a matter of time before I get an insect bloom of some kind. Fodder for the Venus Flytrap that is patiently waiting to be fed.

Headed west last week to BC for my dad’s birthday bash. The land was a pale, late autumn gold and the highway south toward the border was dry. Unusually dry for this time of year. But I was just happy that it wasn’t snowing in my little part of southern Alberta.

Drove past the slide, through the crowsnest, by the ski hill and finally turned right at the fish.

The valley where my parents live typically gets a few good dumps of snow, but it’s never too cold. On the day we were there the snow was slowly melting around the plants in the front flower garden. On the slopes that were fully exposed to the sun, the snow had melted quickly revealing a flowing, rust carpet of leaves.

Under the pear trees, the melting snow also revealed this critter. Sleeping? Maybe not.