Green roofs provide vital roles within urban and cityscape environments offering far more than pleasant aesthetic diversity. Green roofs or ‘living roofs’ provide necessary habitats for a range of wildlife, and can attribute to combatting the effects of climate change by reducing a need for artificial cooling during hot weather, alongside improving a buildings rainwater attenuation.
As with all gardening projects, to build a successful green roof a strong foundation is needed to flourish. The correct growing media or substrate can be selected depending on what is required from the green roof.
Green Roof substrates generally come in two distinct mixes, intensive and extensive depending on the desired function of the green roof. Additional blends also cater for highly specific growing requirements. All substrates need to be lightweight, free-draining, have a good water holding capacity and have good porosity.
Boughton Green Roof Substrates are specially engineered for all different types of roof gardening, both for domestic and commercial projects. All green roof substrates contain recycled secondary aggregates and an organic component to create different substrate blends depending on the end use. All substrates should be based on the German FLL green roof guidelines to ensure all essential properties are included in the blends.
Boughton’s range of green roof substrates includes:
- Boughton’s Extensive Green Roof Substrates are perfect for shallow green roof systems lower than 200mm in depth, often associated with Sedum mats and wildflower growing.
- Boughton’s Intensive Green Roof Substrates have been engineered for larger vegetation such as trees and shrubs, and is more closely representative of the traditional ‘green roof’ project.
- Boughton’s Semi Intensive Green Roof Substrates have a range of hydraulic conductivity values, allowing them to be utilized in a range of climatic areas.
- Boughton’s Podium Green Roof Substrates are designed for landscaping projects where weight loading is not an issue. Its high sand content provides a stable growing medium for a wide range of plants.
- Boughton’s Extra Light Green Roof Substrates provide an ideal growing media for green roofs where weight loading is an issue.
Boughton have developed their range of intensive, extensive, semi intensive, podium and extra lightweight green roof substrates to meet different planting needs. Certain depths of growing media are also recommended for particular planting.
Boughton Loam have supplied substrate for many successful green roof projects all over the country and recommend that any customer get in contact with them first, to discuss the best type of product for their project.
All Boughton green roof soil substrates have been comprehensively developed and analysed for their chemical and physical properties by STRI. Each substrate blend has been modified for different building requirements and green roof planting schemes.
In order to pick the most suitable substrate and installation depth for your project please get in contact with Boughton directly. Custom substrate mixtures are also available to cater for specific project design criteria.
Boughton can be contacted via:
T : 01536 510515
