Library Roof Garden at NTU

Boots City Library Roof Garden in Nottingham

Mine and my colleague Charlotte's Design

During my second year of studying Horticulture at Nottingham Trent University (NTU), our group was asked to design the planting schemes for the borders of the roof garden. The project came about after someone from the Environment Team approached our lecturer Mark. Our CoHort group took the project on as part of our Soft Landscape Design module. There were four borders in total, however some were quite big and there are only eight of us in the group, so we split into groups of two for each bed.

The Environment Team at NTU had a couple of ideas for the roof garden, but had little horticultural knowledge and experience, so that's where we came in! They got their inspiration from the Birmingham City Library and the borders surrounding the library at NTU's Brackenhurst campus. They want the roof garden to provide a natural environment for the students to relax and study. 

Another aim is to help the city campus to achieve a Green Flag award to bring it into line with Brackenhurst and Clifton NTU campuses who already have Green Flag status. The roof garden will also help to remove pollution from the busy city thus making use of an unused space! Hopefully this project will help them achieve their goal, whilst benefiting nature with the aid of bird boxes and plants to enhance the environment for bees and other insects. 

The project proved to be an exciting challenge for us all as the area is very exposed and some of the beds are quite shallow, which played a part in the types of plants we could use! They originally would have liked a design that consisted of permaculture plants (low maintenance edibles), plants for pollinators, sensory plants for fragrance and carbon sequestration plants. However, the location and aspect wasn't viable for some of their ideas as some of the smaller beds were undercover, so the conditions would have been too shady for growing edibles. Although we did meet some of their requirements by providing sensory plants and plants that would attract pollinators (such as Verbena bonariensis, Viburnum x bodnantense 'Dawn', Hamamelis mollis, Sarcococca confusa and Sedum 'Matrona'). We presented our designs to the Environment Team and the project manager on Thursday 26th February 2015.

The construction of the raised beds and seating is currently still ongoing and we have been asked to assist with the planting of our designs when it's finished.  It feels good to be a part of a real life project that will benefit others and I wouldn't mind doing something similar again in the future.

Find out more about the Boots City Library Roof Garden

Work in Progress