Our big goal for the roof garden this summer is to make it more lush and enclosed feeling. Less pots on a tarmac, more slice of drough-tolerant Eden in Brooklyn — something like that.
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?
Brooklyn Roof Garden 
Posted by Good night, Moon Vine « Brooklyn Roof Garden on June 1, 2010 at 3:43 pm
[…] 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 […]