Brushes with mortality give you new perspective, or so they say. So it was that, giddy with anaesthetic, absense shock and surgical panic, mopping at my bloody mouth, I glanced out of the top floor window on the way out of Studental, the Dentist practice where all the staff are practicing, or at least doing their practical, and saw this; who knew? The shocking edifice that is John Henry Brookes has a green roof at a lower level, where you can look down on it; and this time of year it is yellow with Coltsfoot.
The muted browns and rusty greens, the greys and the yellows mixed in all strongly suggest this is a native green roof; the colours are exactly what is out in the countryside at the moment, down to the raucous yellow blast of the coltsfoot which has popped up in all sorts of places this year (I even saw it briefly take over a neighbour's gravelled front garden, frothing up among the bamboo they've unwisely planted).
I'm not sure what the cable-looking thing running through it is; possibly the planting was done on a seeded mat, and this held the whole caboodle down. Possibly it's water-related; come summer, this place won't be supplied by rainwater, not reliably enough anyway.
The scrubby grass growing in the margins suggests that the space is being fully colonised by the British species set, in any case. I hope someone is weeding occasionally though; or next will come buddleia, alder and silver birch.
The muted browns and rusty greens, the greys and the yellows mixed in all strongly suggest this is a native green roof; the colours are exactly what is out in the countryside at the moment, down to the raucous yellow blast of the coltsfoot which has popped up in all sorts of places this year (I even saw it briefly take over a neighbour's gravelled front garden, frothing up among the bamboo they've unwisely planted).
I'm not sure what the cable-looking thing running through it is; possibly the planting was done on a seeded mat, and this held the whole caboodle down. Possibly it's water-related; come summer, this place won't be supplied by rainwater, not reliably enough anyway.
The scrubby grass growing in the margins suggests that the space is being fully colonised by the British species set, in any case. I hope someone is weeding occasionally though; or next will come buddleia, alder and silver birch.
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