Tillys summer house before green roof was installed.

These are pictures of the green roof I created last week in Tilly Carefoots Lancashire Garden. Tilly originally ordered sedum from us to line either side of a path in her garden but was so impressed with the quality and natural beauty of the sedum that she asked us to go back and create a green roof on her round summerhouse. This wasn’t a straight forward job by any stretch of the imagination, so I made sure I went to do the job myself. Each retention strip had to be individually cut to fit the round shape of the roof, to ensure the sedum remains securely in position, but the results were stunning! The sedum perfectly compliments the wonderfully natural suroundings and lets the Summer House almost disappear into the landscape.

The summer house with it's new green roof.

The green roof blends into it's surroundings.

Gardeners World are filming in Tillys garden next week so look out for Sedum Supply’s sedum path and sedum roof coming to your screens soon!

We are getting lots of reports from owners of our sedum roofs at the moment saying that the bees are really loving their sedum flowers – so this has to be good news for all of us. I think everyone should have some sedum in their gardens to help support our struggling bee populations.

We have also added a new testimonial with two great green roof pictures to our tesimonial page this week – thanks to John Kesteven for sending us the pictures of his extension roof and garage roof – all beautifully topped with sedum Johns Green Roofs.

Finally, I’ll be up to the Lake District again next week as the 2nd phase of the Grand Design roof is due to be installed.

Grand Designs Update

Kevin McCloud and the Grand Designs film crew have been back on the site of our wild flower roof project this week and I had an email to say Kevin was knocked out with how the roof has developed! Since April when we installed it, it has grown about a foot and is abloom with daisies and a whole host of other wild flowers.

Wild Flowers Blooming

Satisfied Customers

We recently had a new visitor at our Lancashire based sedum fields. Tilly Carefoot has a fabulous garden in Longridge, Lancashire and she came along to check out the quality of our sedum. She was so impressed she turned up with a trailer the same day and took a consignment of our sedum away with her.

Tilly's sedum - already in bloom!

I went to visit Tilly and her Longridge garden this week and was blown away by everything she has created there. She has used the sedum creatively to border either side of a garden walk and it looks amazing. She also wanted to talk to us about creating a green roof on a round summer house in her garden – which will be a super project.

After my visit, Tilly phoned me to say Gardeners World were planning to run a feature on the garden, so you may well be seeing Sedum Supply’s sedum featured as part of the article – watch this space!

Tilly is co owner of Singletons Dairy in Longridge, who have been making award winning cheese in Lancashire since 1934. They currently export to 27 countries, so they must be doing something very right! Visit their website here.

More Satisfied Customers

This week we had a visit from John Neale – director of Freewarm Flat Roofing Limited.
John explained that they have been involved in installing green roofs across the country and to date they have been buying their sedum from abroad. He came down to Lancashire to look at our sedum and was extremely impressed with its quality. He placed an order straight away for 82 square meters, for a project in Truro, Cornwall, and I am sure we will be doing more business with him in the future.

Like us Freewarm Systems are a small family based company where quality of work and customer service are paramount and they are obviously getting this right as most of their work comes through recommendation. As well as green roofs, they are able to offer long term solutions for failing or leaking flat roofs and commercial flat roofs, using tried and tested quality materials and systems from a select group of manufacturers Visit their website at Flat Roofs.

And not so Satisfied Customers – but they aren’t ours!

We have been experiencing a growth in the number of calls we are getting from people who have had green roofs installed by contractors with little or no experience, with disappointing and often very unfortunate results.

The latest this week was a sedum roof in London which was installed without retention edges, allowing the sedum to slide right off the roof! We have been asked if we can help to correct this roof – which of course we can – but please do be careful when selecting a contractor to supply and install your roof – carefully check their credentials and talk to their customers if you can!

New Green Roof at Wrexham - May 2010

The client was so delighted they have now asked Darren to complete all the metal work on the site because of his depth of metal work and roofing experience.

We visit the Royal Welsh Smallholders and Gardeners show at the weekend, meeting lots of new contacts for our latest new venture and of course to see what’s new and appropriate for our good life in the country….

At home we have had an abundance of bees in the garden, it’s a shame we didn’t get the hives in situ for this year. With all the concern about the bee population at the moment people could help enormously by adding Sedum Green Roofs to their properties – our sedum fields are always abuzz as the sedum flowers seem to be particularly appealing to the bees.

Bees love our Sedum

We have quite a bit of land here so the idea is to use it to grow sedum which we can use to supply Wales and the South of England, whilst our Lancashire plantation continues to deliver to the North and Scotland. This way we can save on air miles.

The intention is to lead the good life here, being as self sufficient as we can and really walking the talk.

As this is our first year in the house we have so much to discover. New flowers and plants are appearing daily. This week we have seen lots of new tulips, a huge honeysuckle which I hadn’t even noticed when it didn’t have any leaves, and a pink flowering rockery plant which I haven’t identified yet but I hope to successfully add to our roofing products.

Wild flower roofs are certainly taking off, especially where budget isn’t the deciding factor. They are a magnet for wildlife and look truly magnificent in the height of summer. This week Darren has been busy a putting a wild flower roof on a boat house manager’s office on the Thames. It is a seeded system so we will hopefully get some pictures to add to the website in the late summer, when if everything is in full bloom – it is going to complement the river perfectly.

We also have a fast establishing green roof pack available for a limited period. It includes fully grown sedum plants and so it should look really beautiful as soon as the roof is complete.

We are now on Twitter, so please use the link on this site to join us and stay updated on the latest news on green roofs.

This project has been bubbling away for a good few months so it was great that our big day had finally arrived to meet the film crew and install the roof.

I was quite chilled when I arrived on site on Monday, as although I knew there would be the inevitable teething problems, I also knew the film crew wouldn’t be there until Tuesday, so I had all Monday to prepare and solved any initial problems.

Then the film crew turned up unexpectedly and insisted on filming the whole process, which was certainly a stressful experience.

Anyway, by the Tuesday we had everything organised and going swimmingly and the end result was fantastic.  The clients were over the moon and the film crew and production team were equally impressed.

You will have to wait to see the show to learn more about the project and see the final roof. During the filming I was interviewed about three times, so I expect that the green roof will be well featured. They filmed every step of the green roof process, so if you are interested in green roofs, this will certainly be one to watch. It is expected to be broadcast in September 2010, however TV schedules can change so watch this blog for details nearer the time.

G and B Northwest

Today I am onsite working with G and B Northwest based in Standish, Lancashire. They manufacture GRP Roofing products (glass reinforced polyester roofing systems). The exciting news is that they have recognised the rapid growth in popularity of green roofs and are now going to be offering a green roof system to their roofing contractors, which will be supplied by sedum supply. So today we are onsite laying a green roof so they can photograph all the steps and put together a step by step installation guide which their installers can use.