Lightweight Soil For Roof Gardens

The high proportion of leca light expanded clay aggregate reduces density and enhances drainage characteristics.

Lightweight soil for roof gardens.

An ideal rooflite soil for intensive green roofs rooftop gardens container gardens planters. This 6th floor pre war rooftop garden had weight restrictions of 35 pounds per square foot. Lightweight volcanic aggregate such as pumice or lava. Rooflite offers a full line of lightweight soil products meticulously engineered for a diverse range of green roof applications and designed to optimize green roof performance.

These aggregates make a good basis for a growing medium. Lightweight intensive roof garden soil. Soil mix for your rooftop garden must be lighter than a regular soil mix but only lightweight soil can t solve all the issues. Dry and saturated weights of growing medium components.

Amber freda home garden design. Unless you have a lot of space to create your own compost system a lightweight soil specifically made for green roofs is ideal. Normally used at depth of 8 12 inches. You will need to incorporate windbreaks into your rooftop garden design.

Fourth keep in mind that your rooftop garden will be considerably windier than a normal garden. Criteria for growing media for roof top gardening. If your garden area receives enough rainwater during the growing season and the average rainfall ratio is higher you would need a soil mix that dries out quickly. Lightweight soil is a blend of screened sandy loam 40 coir 20 pas100 green compost 20 and leca 4 10mm 20.

Use styrofoam peanuts for drainage rather than rocks or pottery shards. The loam complies with bs 3882 2007 and is screened to 10mm. We designed around the weight restrictions by using lightweight potting soil and putting a false bottom inside the planters to reduce total soil volume. In terms of handling and for practical reasons soil alone or topsoil for roof gardening can be difficult to work with in comparison to.

These materials are available throughout the west coast of north america. Supports growth of ground covers perennials ornamental grasses shrubs trees. There have some other factors to be considered. For the best green roof medium the growing media should contain the following.

Specially made rooftop garden soil generally contains a highly engineered blend of minerals and organic matter that is genetically designed to be lightweight retain water and ensure proper drainage.