The rooftop on this Leeds city-centre building was handed over to us as a project in October two years ago. At that point it was a flat grey expanse of modified bitumen with a service door, a water outlet and a load rating that had been surveyed and confirmed able to take containers. Nothing else. The brief was open: document what happens when you treat a rooftop as a growing space across a full twelve months, with no cosmetic staging and no restaging for photographs.
What follows is a selection of images from across that year, with captions explaining what was happening in the space and why. The full archive runs to several hundred frames; these are chosen to show the decisions rather than just the results.
October: the blank start
We placed twelve large containers - the biggest the load rating would comfortably support - in a configuration designed around the prevailing wind direction. The exposed western edge got the deepest, heaviest pots, which would serve as a functional windbreak for everything placed behind them. The pots were filled with a mix of 60% peat-free multipurpose compost, 30% horticultural grit and 10% perlite. No plants went in during October; we let the mix settle and added a slow-release organic fertiliser to break down over the winter.
February: the first planting
The first plants into the space were evergreen structural elements - two clipped box balls (before anyone mentions box blight: these are the buxus sinica microphylla variety with reasonable resistance), a clump of evergreen grasses and a low-growing juniper in the largest windbreak container. These were chosen for their weight-bearing sense and their ability to make the space look considered even when everything else was still bare soil.
"We let the mix settle and added a slow-release organic fertiliser to break down over the winter - so by February the soil was already working."
May: the productive layer arrives
By late April the structural containers were holding their shape and we added the productive layer: three containers of mixed salad leaves, two of dwarf French beans, one of courgette (a compact variety called Patio Star that we'd grown successfully in containers before) and a long trough of climbing nasturtiums on a simple wire frame. The nasturtiums were partly ornamental and partly practical - they attract blackfly away from the beans.
August: peak and problems
August was when the space looked most abundant - and also when it was most work. The courgette had outgrown its container and was threatening the beans; we removed it at the end of July. The salad leaves needed cutting twice a week to prevent bolting. The nasturtiums were magnificent and completely ungovernable. Watering on the roof in a warm August required daily attention because the exposure meant the compost dried faster than anything at ground level.
November: the handover
By November the productive plants were out, the structural plants had been fed with a top-dressing of compost, and the space was quieter but still clearly a garden. Two of the containers had been planted with tulip bulbs for spring. The grasses had taken on an amber tone that caught the low autumn light well. The project had taught us one thing more than any other: a rooftop is not a difficult growing environment once you accept its terms, which are essentially the same as any container garden's terms at elevated wind exposure. Work with what it is rather than against it, and something grows.