Fest your eyes on Esme and David’s amazing Bushwick, Brooklyn roof garden and visit their Flickr page to get the full tour. This is their first year as roof gardeners.

They live on the top floor of their building and run a hose up from their kitchen sink to water.  They use self-watering containers and built a wind barrier with plastic trellises from home depot and some pallets scavenged from a warehouse. This tall red flower is a Mexican Sunflower.

They are experimenting with a small part of the roof area, since the landlord is concerned about the weight and water damage. They are hoping to get more space to grow next summer.

Here’s the very ambitious list of all they are growing up there:
Moonflowers
Morning Glories
Black-eyed Susans
Teddy Bear Sunflowers
Mexican Sunflowers
Eggplant
Strawberries
Corn (Esme reports: “not looking so hot – it was our most ambitious crop!”)
Tomatoes
Cucumbers
Serrano Peppers
Thyme, Basil, Oregano, Parsley, dill
Nasturtiums

I can’t wait to learn more about how the sunflowers are doing. I never even dared attempt growing them. And our rooftop moonvine met an early death, so I’m interested to hear how they are keeping them happy too.

Photos: Esme and David

Check out M & P’s stunning wall of morning glories. Last spring, they built their own trellis and trained the vines to grow up a roof garden wall covered with rust stains.

Here’s the same wall earlier in the season:

This is a great example of turning a challenge in your city garden space into a feature. The wall gives these vines some shelter from wind and full day sun.

For more pics of this Jersey City garden, check out my post from last summer. If you’re growing vines on your roof garden, please let me know and send some photos if you can!

Photos: M in Jersey City

The vision was a night garden, of sorts, with white flowers on the moon vine and in the hanging basket above. We wanted vines to soften the space. Instead, the moon vine got these spotted leaves and just looked sad. My mom think I over-watered it. I wonder if it was too windy or the pole got too hot.

I get weirdly sad about killing these plants, tearing them out before they are totally done. But our roof garden is a shared space for the entire building and I don’t want it looking un-cared-for. Flatbush Gardener tweeted to cheer me up: “I have no time to mourn all the plants I’ve killed!”

We replaced the moon vine with this stunning English ivy trained up a trellis from a flori$t in the West Village. We planted three geraniums with vinca vines at the base. The new planting — we’ll get some pix once it settles in a bit — feels a bit formal for our garden and rather Republican somehow. But R* and I both like geraniums, they remind us of his mum’s back garden in England. They also grow amazingly well in sun-soaked containers.

At the start of the season, we added three small trees for structure. Today’s project is to add some vines, inspired by how O2B’s Brooklyn roof garden uses vines to create a sense of abundance and energy.

We’re experimenting with two different vine projects:

#1 We’re planting Old Spice Sweet Peas (Lathrus odoratus), a sweet smelling Mediterranean native, and Black Eyes Susan vine a.k.a. Lemon Star (Thunbergia alata) in a small terra cotta window box. We hope it will grow up a trellis we bought online from Terrain.

#2 We were admiring a huge moon vine at the Phillips Farms stands at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket this morning. Just as I was asking R* if he thought it could endure the heat of the roof, a woman walked by and said she had grown it on her roof garden. She loved seeing the large white flowers at night. We decided to spring for the $15 plant and try to run it up the ugly pole at the front of our garden. The vision is big white flowers obscuring an ugly plumbing pole, framing our Manhattan view. We shall see. (This great description of a fragrant twilight roof garden with moon vine gives us hope.)

Neither of these vine projects were too expensive. So for about $25, we’re testing out three vines. Let’s see what we learn. Any advice as we get started?

Check out this roof garden in Red Hook, Brooklyn on Apartment Therapy.  Diana and Chris built the furniture with palette wood scavenged from the streets of their neighborhood.

Image: Apartment Therapy

Take a look around the Jersey City roof garden M & P share with their dog Caruso. There’s a couple of firsts here: we’ve never seen roof garden tomato plants this huge . . . and we’ve never seen a rooftop water garden before.

M’s morning glory vines are climbing a rope trellis he made. See how the vines will cover the rust stains dripping down the roof!

“The tomatoes got HUGE then waterlogged but i think they were saved. The watermelons are doing well too,” says M. They covered up their tomato plants with garbage bags to protect them from these record breaking June rains.

M and P, thanks for these amazing roof garden photos.

Ready for even more roof garden photos? Check out the Wonder on Willow Street in Brooklyn. And for more roof gardening pets, click over to Nico the cat.

Images: M in Jersey City

We put together this pink pot from plants on sale at the Greenmarket yesterday.

• Thriller: Anisodontea Slightly Strawberry
• Filler: Drought tolerant white verbena
• Spiller: Pink Frost sweet potato vine

The Anisodontea can grow as high as three feet. We’ll see about that. We like how the vine coordinates with the Slightly Strawberry (silly name!) flowers. We plant white flowers in every pot we can for night vision.

More about Thriller, Filler, Spiller design concept here . . .

Isn’t O2B’s Brooklyn roof garden photo stunning? Totally captures the moody city summer sky.

As I studied this picture, I realized this photo can teach us a lot about texture and varying materials in roof gardens too: ceramic tile, wooden furniture with canvas pillows, cement pillars. The light fixtures create a sense of a roof … and see how the vines are creeping up the support wires?

Image: O2B via Flickr with Creative Commons

Check out this inspiring picture from fellow Brooklynite Bearsky. The vines add a sense of whimsy and  soften the edges with jungle-y style. I’ve gotta find a way to incorporate some vines this summer. The rich deep colors of the foliage are an inspiration too. Better get some coleus quick.

Thanks for the inspiration, Bearsky.

Photo: Bearsky, used with permission via Flickr