{"id":608,"date":"2012-09-24T06:00:42","date_gmt":"2012-09-24T14:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=608"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:30","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:30","slug":"up-on-the-roof","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/up-on-the-roof\/","title":{"rendered":"Up On the Roof"},"content":{"rendered":"

UP ON THE ROOF<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>The media has given a lot of publicity over the past few years to \u201cgreen\u201d structures, including roofs and walls.\u00a0 Green roofs, when properly supported, planted and tended, can keep buildings cooler than conventional roofing materials.\u00a0 Green walls are a way to beautify interior or exterior space by growing plants in pockets, grids or openings in specially designed wall structures.\u00a0 The green wall phenomenon is a natural extension of a normal garden occurrence.\u00a0 Every gardener with a stone wall, especially of the dry laid variety, has found plants growing out of the crevices.\u00a0 Taking this a step further, the English mid-twentieth century doyenne, Margery Fish, deliberately planted small specimens throughout her rock walls.<\/p>\n

Green roofs, now fashionable in cities, used to be the exclusive domain of poor and rural people.\u00a0 With wood in short supply, settlers in the American Midwest used materials close at hand to build themselves sod or sod-roofed houses.\u00a0 The English and many other groups have created thatched roofs for centuries.<\/p>\n

I am fascinated by the plants that have traditionally grown on \u201cgreen\u201d roofs.\u00a0 Botanically many of them are distinguished by the species name \u201ctectorum,\u201d which is Latin for \u201croof.\u201d\u00a0 Now, when the need for tough, adaptable plants is greatest, these traditional tectorum plants have experienced a resurgence in popularity.<\/p>\n

Probably the best known roof plant is Sempervivum tectorum, a succulent sometimes known as the houseleek.\u00a0 It boasts wonderful common names including Jove\u2019s beard, Jupiter\u2019s eye; Thor\u2019s beard; St. George\u2019s beard, old man and woman, live-forever, hens and chicks and\u2014my favorite\u2014welcome-home-husband-though-never-so-drunk.\u00a0 Sempervivums are low growers, forming rosettes of grey-green succulent leaves. Their offspring, the \u201cchicks\u201d of the common name, grow up around them and can be easily detached and transplanted.<\/p>\n

Living on a roof can be hot, dry business and sempervivums are well suited for the task. They are surprisingly cold tolerant and even bear lovely flowers. In addition to their practical virtues, houseleeks are reputed to be able to ward off lightening strikes and\/or evil\u2014depending on which culture you belong to and which legend you believe.\u00a0 The common names associated with lightening gods like Jove, Jupiter and Thor underscore this association.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t have the time or energy to grow houseleek on your roof, the plants work well in living wreathes or potted arrangements as well.<\/p>\n

Another well known roof plant is Iris tectorum, a native of China often called Chinese or Japanese roof iris.\u00a0 Traditionally these plants were grown on thatched roofs and I can image how beautiful clumps of them would be springing up on top of a house.\u00a0 The long leaves are light to medium green and textured.\u00a0 The plants grow only twelve to eighteen inches tall, with flowers that are somewhat \u201cnested\u201d in the leaves.\u00a0 Usually the blooms are blue-purple, but they can be white as well.<\/p>\n

Though Iris tectorum does not have house leek\u2019s array of evocative nicknames, it does have an interesting story.\u00a0 According to the Pacific Bulb Society\u2019s website, at sometime in the past, the Japanese emperor decreed that only food plants be grown on arable land.\u00a0 The dried, ground roots of Iris tectorum were traditionally used to make face powder, which women were loathe to give up, so the plants were lifted from harm\u2019s way and moved to the thatched rooftops.<\/p>\n

The species name \u201ctectorum\u201d also turns up affixed to a couple of grasses.\u00a0 One is a noxious agricultural pest called Bromus tectorum or cheatgrass.\u00a0 The species originated in Eurasia and most likely arrived in the United States in shipments of grain.\u00a0 Though it is somewhat useful as a forage plant, it is invasive and outcompetes most other vegetation in places like the intermountain West, where it has taken hold.\u00a0 Another roof plant is the South African native, Cape Rush or Chondropetalum tectorum, which is sometimes sold, especially in California, as an ornamental grass.\u00a0 Though information is limited on the reason for assigning the high altitude name to the two grasses, I assume that at some point in time both were used as thatching materials in their native areas.<\/p>\n

The roof of my Victorian house is not conducive to the \u201cgreen roof\u201d treatment and I have a feeling that the plaster interior walls wouldn\u2019t take kindly to the idea of supporting a \u201cgreen wall.\u201d\u00a0 My Sempervivum tectorum are planted in a raised bed in the back garden.\u00a0 I am tempted to install some Iris tectorum nearby, just to keep them company.<\/p>\n

Succulents have become so popular that sempervivums are available just about everywhere these days.\u00a0 If you have a yen to decorate your roof or other areas with Iris tectorum, you can purchase one from Plant Delights Nursery, Inc,.
\n9241 Sauls Road, Raleigh, NC 27603, (919) 772-4794; www.plantdelights.com<\/a>.\u00a0 The print catalog is available for the unconventional price of 10 first class stamps or one box of chocolates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UP ON THE ROOF \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The media has given a lot of publicity over the past few years to \u201cgreen\u201d structures, including roofs and walls.\u00a0 Green roofs, when properly supported, planted and tended, can keep buildings cooler than conventional roofing materials.\u00a0 Green walls are a way to beautify interior or exterior space by growing plants … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3],"tags":[238,391,398,397,396,393,392,394,395],"class_list":["post-608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","tag-garden-history","tag-green-roofs","tag-green-walls","tag-hens-and-chicks","tag-houseleek","tag-iris-tectorum","tag-plants-for-green-roofs","tag-roof-iris","tag-sempervivum-tectorum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":609,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions\/609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}