She also needed to install a wooden deck and buy new lightweight containers for plants. And rooftop gardening is trickier than ground level gardening, due to high winds, sunnier conditions, and an increased need for water. But Serritella found that there was a lot of information available on container gardening. Lightweight planters and lightweight planting medium are readily available at garden centers. One trick she learned from her research was to line the containers with styrofoam, to insulate and help the plants over winter.
Rooftop gardens are definitely more complicated than digging a backyard plot.
But in areas where that backyard plot doesn't exist, they offer an untapped potential for greening and cleaning up the air we breathe and the peace that can be found communing with nature in a garden. They also offer the exhilarating feeling of looking at the world from above. Flying into O'Hare, you see acres and acres of bare roofs. The Chicago Plan Just like dark clothes, dark rooftops absorb the sun's rays, heating buildings and increasing temperatures in congested cities by as much as eight degrees. Hotter buildings increase the use of air conditioning, which leads to higher energy use and more pollution from the burning of fossil fuels.