“Our rooftop garden is a haven from busy city life, full of colour and scent”

A boring grey rooftop has been transformed by over 250 pots, bursting with flowers, fruit and veg and buzzing with wildlife

Before

Garden size Corridor 1.3m x 35m, rooftop 2.3m x 35m

When Richard Applegate and his partner Nathaniel moved into their apartment block in East London 12 years ago, they were keen to get growing. But there was a hurdle – their garden was a 35m-long communal rooftop without a patch of soil in sight! But this didn’t deter greenfingered Richard, who has slowly built up an incredible collection of more than 250 pots, bursting with fragrant flowers and delicious edibles, creating a space where the human and wildlife residents can meet and thrive.

It was pretty much unused, with just a few pots that contained some sad-looking plants – it was unloved, grey and boring. Since we moved in, we have gradually brought in more containers and we now have hundreds in our collection! The building is listed, so all the height you see in the pictures has to be supported by the plant itself, or with added supports in the pot, or they can be fastened to existing structures such as drainpipes.

We’re only a 10-minute walk from Columbia Road Flower Market. A lot of the inspiration has come from our early-morning Sunday strolls down to the market, where it’s difficult to walk away empty handed – there’s always room for one more plant, isn’t there?

It’s been a steep learning curve figuring out when to change the compost, and monitoring the feeding and nutrients – it’s more work than a normal garden! Our gardening year begins around Easter, when we put in potatoes

and start off seeds such as tomatoes in the apartment. Then, as the weather improves, they all get potted up and taken outside, where the garden slowly evolves and then erupts in summer.

It’s always changing. In spring and summer, hanging baskets are put up, tables or ladders added to raise plants and new layouts created for that year’s blooms. In winter, empty pots are used to shelter plants from the worst of the season’s weather.

At first, we were just growing traditional vegetables such as carrots, beans and potatoes, along with all the flowers. But in recent years, we’ve been trying to grow more unusual things to eat, that you don’t tend to find in the shops, like heritage varieties of tomatoes – I absolutely love green tomatoes – and purple potatoes and beans. We grow so many tomato plants that we give loads away to friends and neighbours. Two years ago, we even grew Cape gooseberries – I was amazed that you could grow them here, and we had plenty of fruit to make into jams and other goodies.

London gets hot in summer, so there’s lots of watering to do, which can take up to two hours a day normally and twice daily on hot summer days, which can be a struggle when working full time. But the wind is probably the biggest challenge as plants can get damaged easily and pots can crack. You have to make sure things are weighed down and protected. We have some giant aloe vera plants that have to come inside over winter – we tried to keep them outside one year and I remember trying to wrap them in a spare duvet when it was snowing, the neighbours must

Several seating areas mean that Richard, Nathaniel and their neighbours can relax and enjoy the garden The walkway to neighbouring flats is surrounded with colourful containers, bursting with flowers In the corridor, fuchsias and jasmine climb the walls, and are surrounded by hollyhocks and petunias, with agapanthus pushing up from pots below Tables are used to raise small pots and to create more spaces to put plants Items, such as this Belfast sink, are upcycled as planters

have thought I was mad! But we also benefit from the warmer microclimate. In the corridor there are various types of jasmine and fuchsias trained to climb, with agapanthus pushing through from pots on tables.

We have a whole mix of containers – some have been bought new but a lot have been recycled. We also found pieces of wood that had been thrown away and made planters out of them – they can be really expensive to buy. One of our friends helped us find fibreglass containers that were being chucked out by the council. There are lots of options for containers – anything that can hold compost and have drainage holes put in – so you can get really creative.

We’re on the first floor and you walk along the corridor to the flats, so we’ve filled that space with plants. There’s also a rooftop bit that you get onto with a ladder and anyone can access that. Some of the neighbours use it to sunbathe or just relax, but others are really into it, helping us water and they have even started growing vegetables themselves. It has really encouraged people to start growing more, even houseplants.

It’s such a haven from busy city life, a quiet and peaceful place where me, my partner and the neighbours can relax. I find that it is an important place for everyone’s mental wellbeing by providing the ability to reconnect with plants and nature while living in the city. It is also a social space where we get to chat (from a safe distance) about the flowers and plants, and generally get to know one another – making it feel more like a community rather than having neighbours that nobody knows or speaks to.

I also love the amount of wildlife the garden attracts, which makes it really worthwhile knowing you are helping the many bees, insects and birds that visit here.

The rooftop garden provides a welcome sanctuary away from the bustle of the busy city Because the building is listed, brackets cannot be attached to the walls, so hanging baskets of petunias are hung from drainpipes Scraps of discarded wood have been turned into planters for fruit and veg, including rhubarb