Sedum Roof

BobFlannigon

I'm thinking of planting a sedum roof on my (new) shed roof.  The price of sedum blanket seems rather high, though, and as I'm tight I'm wondering if it's easy to make your own (I'm not craving an instant-win).

Has anyone made their own?
Does anyone have a sedum roof on their shed?

wild edges

It can be as simple as creating a suitable substrate and sprinkling sedum cuttings onto the surface at the right time of year. Planting rooted plugs is a faster way to get them established though or even sow a few seed trays and plant them out once the roots have filled the tray. First pick your sedums and them work out the required substrate though as some like a deeper soil. I like to vary the depths so you get a good range of plants but avoid anything that dies off to root stock over the winter as it eventually gets smothered by ones that don't.

This was my mini roof in its second year. All planted with established plants.

and when it flowered

The sedum rupestre was a great addition as the tall yellow flower stalks really stand out well and it can trail over the edges once it gets established. Sedum album is a good allrounder especially at the drier edges.

dappledshade

wild edges said:

It can be as simple as creating a suitable substrate and sprinkling sedum cuttings onto the surface at the right time of year. Planting rooted plugs is a faster way to get them established though or even sow a few seed trays and plant them out once the roots have filled the tray. First pick your sedums and them work out the required substrate though as some like a deeper soil. I like to vary the depths so you get a good range of plants but avoid anything that dies off to root stock over the winter as it eventually gets smothered by ones that don't.

This was my mini roof in its second year. All planted with established plants.

and when it flowered

The sedum rupestre was a great addition as the tall yellow flower stalks really stand out well and it can trail over the edges once it gets established. Sedum album is a good allrounder especially at the drier edges. 

@wild edges that's a lovely lot of sedum you have there.

I tried planting up my shed roof years back - looked good for a while (it was a very small area, so I got some sedum mat off cuts), but it suffered in winter (bald patches), then the killer blow was when blackbirds starting landing on it and ripping it up in chunks, to get to the small worms.

BobFlannigon

I'd quite like it to  benefit wildlife.  Perhaps it's better to use deeper soil on the roof and not bother with Sedum, instead plant something else in it?
Did you  get rid of yours @dappledshade?

dappledshade

BobFlannigon said:

I'd quite like it to  benefit wildlife.  Perhaps it's better to use deeper soil on the roof and not bother with Sedum, instead plant something else in it?
Did you  get rid of yours @dappledshade?
@dappledshade

dappledshade

@BobFlannigon it sort of got rid of itself by dying off entirely 😞 Which was a great shame, because whilst it lasted the wrens loved picking tiny insects off it and it was lovely to watch! It never flowered and I think that in spite of following the instructions to the letter, there wasn't enough soil even for sedums and possibly to much water drained off, too fast, leaving it too dry.

wild edges

BobFlannigon said:

I'd quite like it to  benefit wildlife.  Perhaps it's better to use deeper soil on the roof and not bother with Sedum, instead plant something else in it?
Did you  get rid of yours @dappledshade?

You just have to be aware that a deeper soil will be better for weeds and need more maintenance. Even a sedum roof will need an annual weed though but they're generally pretty small and easy to remove. Flowering sedums are greatly appreciated by pollinators around here and if you pick the right plants there will be flowers for most of the year.

Joyce21

Your sedum roof is beautiful @ wild edges

BobFlannigon

It is beautiful.  @wild edges does it take you much effort to maintain?  You mention weeding it once a year, is that all you do?  We had a very dry summer here, did you water it much during that period (or would you, if it wasn't dry where you were)?

KT53

Sedum roofs are also potentially extremely heavy and standard shed roof construction may not carry it long term.  Without additional structural support you could wake up to a sedum floor one morning.

wild edges

BobFlannigon said:

It is beautiful.  @wild edges does it take you much effort to maintain?  You mention weeding it once a year, is that all you do?  We had a very dry summer here, did you water it much during that period (or would you, if it wasn't dry where you were)?

Not much maintenance no but it's at eye level so I just picked out some weeds as they appear and then gave it a good weed when the plants died back a bit over the winter in case I missed anything. It's the roof of a rabbit hutch and my original plan was to grow edible food for the rabbits on there that we could just pick and feed to them as snacks. It worked ok for clover for a while but the soil was too shallow for anything else. It would get watered every couple of days when I changed the rabbits' water bottles and poured the remains onto the roof but not much else. I had a couple of hardy saxifrages on there that I kept watered if it was very dry though. You can see the flowering spike with the white flowers from one in the first photo. The upright plank at the back was to protect against the north wind which helped a lot when plants were getting established.

It's pretty hardy for the most part. I even had a pair of racing pigeons living on there for about a week until their owner came and picked them up. They trampled most of the plants but nothing seemed to mind too much. You can see some of the clover in this pic actually.