Last night I went to such a fun Pinterest party at The Cocktail Trading Company. We heard from botanist, James Wong, and had a go at mixing our own cocktails with weird and wonderful flowers (Electric Daisies that give your tongue electric shocks) and the cutest baby cucumbers you’ve ever seen. I really enjoyed listening to James speak about how much is possible in terms of growing your own food, no matter what type of space you have, and it has inspired me to do more on our roof terrace. Coincidentally, I have been up there a fair bit this week – how blissful has this sunshine been? – and so today’s post fits nicely with the theme of the party. James also spoke about using Pinterest as a source of inspiration for your garden and storing away ideas and being able to come back to them years later. Another coincidence is that today’s post is based on this pin that I pinned about three years ago. Thank you Pinterest UK, it was such a fun party (and yes, I do have a sore head this morning)!
I posted a couple of weeks ago about how much we need to spruce up our roof terrace and one of the major challenges is adding green to this urban roof top in the centre of London. I’ve been challenged to make over a very small section of the terrace and, as every little helps, I got to work on trying to cover up some of the horrible red-stained fencing chosen by the developers (if I had my way I would tear the lot down!). Each raised bed has this fencing behind it so we can grow climbers to cover some of it behind the beds. However, there is also fencing behind bench seats so there is no way of covering it, as you can see here, without turing the seats into planters…
Before
I’m desperate to try to cover up some of this imposing fencing.
The ever helpful Otto.
We always try to grow as much food as possible up here, rather than just flowers, and herbs are perfect as they are very hardy and can be picked and eaten immediately when we come up here for dinner and BBQ’s. Obviously, you can’t climb herbs up rather nasty fencing so I used an idea I saw years ago on Pinterest to plant into guttering…
Planting guttering
I bought four strips of guttering that is relatively inexpensive. I lined it with good quality soil to help the herbs grow and I didn’t drill any holes into it for drainage as one of the problems we have on the roof is the wind dries the soil so quickly.
I planted herbs, evenly spaced, across each gutter.Herbs wok well for this type of shallow planting as they do not need a huge amount of root space. Bedding plants would also be perfect.
I screwed in brackets for each strip of guttering.
After
And then I placed each planted strip of guttering into its brackets and gave it a good water. I did this on Tuesday and the weather was AMAZING!
I planted Tarragon, Coriander, Thyme, Mint (keep this separate to the rest of the herbs as it can take over), Parsley, Basil and Chives.
Hopefully, when the herbs grow bushier (and the coriander recovers from being out in the sun with no water for too long!) this fencing will not be quite so offensive with some lovely greens and handy for meals up here, too. I’d really like to do some more vertical planting along these fences. I’ll keep you updated…
Katy x
*This post was written in collaboration with MKM building supplies
That is such a neat idea for your terrace and looks lovely too.
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Thanks, Katie. Not sure it looks lovely yet but every little helps x