Zen Appeal: An Upper West Side Roof Garden that Transcends the Rest
This roof garden design New York is located on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and features a bamboo screen in black fiberglass planters. Nothing works as well in a shade garden as bamboo to provide an instantaneous effect of lushness, height, and a Zen-like, tropical feel. Bamboo is extremely versatile and can tolerate conditions ranging from full sun to full shade. It also does really well in containers, which keep the roots contained and the plants in check. In this garden, we’ve softened a monolithic looking black metal wall through the use of a row of bamboo planters, a red Japanese maple, and clustered container plantings in Asian ceramic pots. The photo below shows how cozy and inviting the garden looks with the addition of some outdoor furniture. This rooftop terrace is located on Manhattan’s Upper West Side overlooking the Hudson River. All of the plants are watered using drip irrigation lines set on an automatic timer. We’ve also run low-voltage lighting cables attached to black metal light fixtures into all of the larger planters.
Pro Tip:
Urban gardening comes with its own unique set of challenges. Roof gardens have to deal with extremes in temperature and high winds that can quickly shred large-leaf plants that are not suitable to life atop a mountain. If you always think of your rooftop garden as being like a mountain, it will help you to understand the types of plants that will do well here. Plants that are top-heavy will be prone to tipping over, unlike the bottom-heavy shapes of conifers that are so ubiquitous on mountains all over the world.
