Falling in love - with a meadow turf roof!

So, I fell in love ...with several metres of very special turf. This Saturday (31 August) a team of volunteers and two generous experts installed the new green roof at Barracks Lane Community Garden. It looks interesting even now, and will be gloroius in about 6 weeks time.

To install the roof we had to get three tonnes of soil off the back of a trailer, 20m down a narrow alley, and up 2 metres onto the roof of our shelter - all without any electrical or mechanical power, just people, barrows, trugs, and a lot of good will.

We had 16 volunteers and although the intention was to work in shifts of four or five people for an hour at a time, in the end we just all mucked in, taking a rest when we felt like it. We got the soil up onto the roof in about three hours, and then had the fun of lifting up and unfurling the rolls of meadow turf on the roof.

The turf is purpose grown for roofs by Wildflower Turf on James Hewetson-Brown's farm just outside Newbury. It contains 30 species of native wildflower, and four species of grass. James grows it on hessian mats, and this makes it easy to lift, and creates a mat of roots that establish quickly. Once established we shouldn't need to water - even in a drought. It may turn to hay, but with an annual cut in Autumn, it should come back to life each Spring. But at the moment, and in our current drought, it needs to be watered every day - a bit like taking the dog for a walk!

The roof design was done with Kay and Gareth Davies of Oxford Green Roofs - they helped us design the roof so that it retained the soil, put in the layers of butyl and fleece needed to line the roof, and finally organised the supply of the soil and turf. But most importantly they showed the volunteers what to do and how to do it as well as lending a lot of muscle power themselves. They donated their time and expertise to the garden, and we are very grateful!

For Barracks Lane Community Garden as well as contributing to the biodiversity of the site, and increasing the number of native and local species we grow, the roof is also designed to help deal with the rainwater run-off from the shelter, and the concrete slope at the top of the garden. The roof will absorb some rainwater, and what is left over will drain through the gully at the back of the green roof and be collected in a butt to add to the garden's water harvesting and storage system.