Living roofs aren’t just for big, expensive homes and commercial installations. Rob Roy, the founder of the Earthwood Building School and author of 12 books about alternative building methods, offers 20 pages of how-to in his most recent volume, “Stone view: How to Build an Eco-friendly Little Guest House” (New Society Publishers, $25.95).
Roy gives directions for constructing the platform to hold the roof, mixing soils and selecting plants, plus pictures of the fuzzy green lids that top his home, guesthouse and sauna. Two of his buildings are covered with thick blankets of grasses and wildflowers.
The guesthouse has a lighter roof — less soil, and thus, less moisture for the plants — so it’s planted mostly in chives and ground-cover sedums, like hen and chicks. These plants bloom, but they also retain moisture in their leaves, which keeps Roy and his wife, Jaki, from having to water their upstate New York home during dry periods. Dana Coffield
