Living Roof - Recycled Plastic

My approach to gardening has been as an avid vegetable grower.  The dictum has been: If you can't eat it - don't grow it.  So you might detect a bit of self consciousness about this post but also the enthusiasm of the convert.  The latest project I have been involved with has got Sedum, Saxifrage, Sempervivum, Ajuga....  Nothing you would want to eat but each ideal for a living green roof. Ok it doesn't look that green yet, but all the trays are second use supermarket food trays, so there are green credentials built into the design. If any module fails or overgrows it's neighbours, it can easily be removed, replanted or pruned and replaced.  The whole thing sits atop the bug school bug hotel and, I should mention, was planted up by the School Eco Group.  It will add an extra dimension to the 'hotel' in attracting pollinating winged insects.   

Insect Hotel with Living Roof:

Now what song could possibly suit this post?

Arthropodeum - Bug Hotel

If you think I have been a bit quiet lately, one factor has been that I have been devoting rather a lot of time to a School Garden and in particular to this bug hotel project.  It is work in progress as I have a green roof to set on top and a pond to sink alongside it too.  It's fair to say that I have got the bug.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

Any nagging doubts I might have had about making the garden more wildlife friendly have been removed at a stroke with the appearance of this creature in our garden.  It wouldn't be here if we hadn't installed a (very) modest pond.

The other feature (aside from not cutting the grass) is our wildflower flowerbed.  We sowed this last year and it displayed some limited success.  This year it, or at least one particular plant, is just about to burst into flower. Hopefully it will be the first of a flowering succession and not a brutish monoculture.

Wildflower Flowerbed

Reverse View

 It has already put on a foot of growth since these pictures were taken and the birdbath is fast disappearing from view. 

And where is the pond?  It's right here:

It is a lot less obtrusive than when first installed:

We have no regrets about turning our garden over to other living creatures.  It really is very rewarding!

p.s. Yes we do have a bug hotel too. The biggest challenge is changing gardening practices and then adding a variety of habitats.

One Man Went to Mow...?

Nature likes a bit of a mess, and on that basis we have regressed to a very natural garden.  The "wildflower meadow bed" is looking as bit raggedy and the leaves are littering what remains of the lawn. In the past I might have felt guilty about this scenario, but now I have that warm autumn glow of knowing that I am a habitat creator. 

Earlier in the season it could still pass as a formal garden of sorts:

Of course some of the wildflowers are biennial and won't flower until next year (foxgloves for one).  Others require a cold snap before they will even germinate (Yellow Rattle for one). So it would be unfair to judge the project so early on.

Reverse view now

Reverse view in summer (Scottish Summer that is)

Other environmental enhancements in recent years also mature year on year.

Pond Set Up

Pond with Bee Nesting Annex

Bug Hotel Newbuild

Bug Hotel Today

Here is a gallery of just some of the meadowflowers that flowered in the first year:

Selfheal

Oxeye Daisy - or is it Corn Chamomile?

Red Clover

?

Chicory 

Supernature?

Urban Bees (and other insects)

I've been meaning to post on this topic for some time.  I started building an insect hotel a year ago but didn't get very far.  (It turns out you need quite a lot of material).

Then (as I may have mentioned before) we went for a week's break in Lyon. In their parks they are going in for insect hotels in a big way.  This installation was on a vacant patch on a street corner in the Croix Rousse area :

Add caption

And these were in the Parc Tete d'Or

Alongside there is a traditional herb spiral, re-dubbed an "insect spiral"!

Back at the first site I recognised an old friend from home Great Mullein (Verbascum thapsus).

All these installations looked pretty new, so it would be interesting to revisit them to see how they progress.

Meanwhile back to my own paltry efforts:

Still some vacant cells to be topped up. But it's a start.

You can see some better pictures of the Parc Tete d'Or site at the following link:


http://www.urbanbees.eu/pano/parc-tete-dor