Introduction: Rooftop Garden for a Tiny House

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About: I am a maker and here I am sharing the fun stuff of making and creating! Apart from fun my goal is to share knowledge and acquire it. My topics are woodworking, metalworking, maybe some composites, electronic…

Hello everybody!

This instructable is about making a small rooftop garden or a flower bed. I made this on my small workshop in the garden. I have written a Intructable on that was made if you are curious.

We have neighbors living above and next to us and with this small green area they have a better view than only roofs so it is also better for them.

Step 1: What You Need

This project is super simple and consist out of two types of material. Outdoors grade boards. 19mm or 1" thick and 150mm or 6" wide.
And pole of 70x70 mm or 3x3", also outside grade wood.

You need 3x 3m - 10 feet sections of the boards.
And the pole only 1m or 3 feet.
A sheet of plastic foil 3.5 x 1.2 m or 12 x 4 feet.
Corrugated roofing plastic sheets 2x.

You can find free plans and details on my website here for the project.

Check if your roof can carry the load of the garden, in my case it was around 500 kg about half a ton so that is considerable.

Step 2: Cutting the Wood

First the boards needed to be cut to length.
Two lengths can stay at 3m - 10 feet. And 2 sections need to be at 1m - 9 feet.

The pole sections need to be cut at 160 mm - 6.3" (2x) and 170 mm - 6.7".
The roof is at an angle and therefore the two long sections are placed at the lower end of the roof.

Step 3: Assembly

So now the boards and pole sections are screwed together. This is nice and simple with the pole sections in the corners as support.

This way the corners stay together over time.

Step 4: Placing Soil

So right now the corrugated roofing sheets can be placed over the existing roof. In the video this step is skipped but this is very good for drainage of the roof itself and soil.

Over this the plastic foil can be placed and then the bags of soil. In total 560l (148 gallons) of soil was put in place. The plastic doesn't need to go to the top of the wooden edge if it is halway or slightly below this will give a small water reservoir.

Step 5: Placing Plants and Seeds

We wanted to make the garden eco-frienly and with some flowers so we put bee friendly seeds for plant in the garden and two small lavendel shurbs.

Step 6: Water!

Then some water could be applied! I put some water every day for 4 days on the roof. It was summer so extra water was needed. Otherwise that is not needed, here in NL it rains every other day.

Step 7: Let It Grow

After 2 days the small plants were already growing and after 4 weeks the bee's were very happy with the plants!