Brooklyn Roof Garden Tilling the tar beach

We have an Ameria maritima ‘Duesseldorf Pride’ growing in a small container up on our roof garden. It looks like a mound of grass. The green is nice, but quiet. Easy to miss when it isn’t flowering.

But . . . look at that same grassy mound a few days … and there’s stems with bright pink flowers boing-ing around like antlers. We were just up on the roof watering and found two new flowers. We swear those weren’t there on Friday. We been researching more about this plant tonight, and we read that the game may be over — it stops blooming in late June to early July, so it sounds like the show may be over for this year.

We bought our Armeria maritima, also called “sea pinks”, at Liberty Sunset Nursery, Red Hook, Brooklyn. The guy working there said the plant would work well since it can tolerate the wind and pollution on an urban roof garden.

Next year, we need to grow something in the middle of the table. I think we should transplant the Armeria maritima to an umbrella planter. It seems like if we sat around our patio table long enough we could just about watch the flowers pop up.

I found out sea pinks are also grown on the roof garden at the Ballard branch of the Seattle Public Library.

Images: SD State, HydrotechUSA