When Dakota first built our coop back in 2008, one of the many cool features was its green roof. After doing his research, he built a multi-layered system to make sure the roof had good drainage and the right soil mix. You can read that original post and see photos here. It was a really cool idea, but, unfortunately, the original green roof pictured below did not survive.

I blame a combination of squirrels, blazing sun and infrequent watering. You know, the usual.

Recently, I have really wanted to re-plant the coop's green roof. It's still a great idea, and the drainage system still works. All I really needed was a way to keep the plants from drying out in the summer and keep the squirrels from digging up their roots. My solution was simple and obvious: burlap.

I had some burlap left over from my son's birthday party decorations. So, I added additional soil into the green roof "bed" and then stretched the burlap across. Then, I used a heavy-duty staple gun to secure the burlap around the edges of the roof.

There was one plant still alive in the old roof, so I cut a little "x" in the burlap to let it through. Then I cut a bunch of additional slits all over the burlap to add more plants.

I pressed the burlap back around the base of each plant for maximum protection and water-retention. The plants I chose this time are a variety of succulents--some taken from cuttings of existing plants and some purchased by Dakota. Several are aggressive spreaders, and my hope is that this new burlap mulch idea will allow the plants to grow and fill in the spaces in between. It should. Burlap is pretty permeable.

So, here's the newly re-planted green roof. I'll let you know how things progress this time. I promise to water more frequently this time around.

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