What are Roof Gardens?

Roof gardens, as you might imagine, are gardens installed on rooftops. Rooftop gardens are especially common in urban areas, where space for cultivation of ornamental and edible plants is limited, but they can be found in other regions, as well. Depending on the people doing the cultivation, a roof garden may be purely ornamental, as in the instance of the landscaped gardens which surround rooftop pools at prestigious hotels, or it may be more functional, providing an assortment of fruits, vegetables, and herbs. Mixed gardens with elements of both are not uncommon. People have been taking advantage of the space on their rooftops to garden for thousands of years. Archaeological sites in parts of the Middle East and the American Southwest, for example, show that many villages had thriving worlds on their rooftops, with some communities even traveling from rooftop to rooftop, rather than along surface paths and roads. Roof gardens are especially common in temperate and hot climates, ...  more