Learn to develop appropriate and functional roof and vertical gardens, for residential, commercial and public landscapes.

There are lots of different reasons for creating a vertical garden or roof garden, and the way you develop the garden may be affected by the reason you create it. Common reasons might be:

• Lack of space for a more extensive garden
• Improve aesthetics of an ugly place (wall or roof)
• Improve physical environment (eg. Reduce glare, modify temperature, filter air pollutants, reduce water run off and mitigate flood problems)
• Urban farming – growing crops in an urban area

There are 9 lessons in this course:

1. Scope & Nature of Roof and Vertical Gardens
2. Construction Functional and Appropriate Vertical and Roof Gardens
3. Climbing Plants and Structures for climbing
4. Plants Suited to Roof and Vertical Gardens
5. Adaptations for Other Plants in Roof and Vertical Gardens
6. Container Growing
7. Maintenance –watering, pest control
8. Applications/Landscaping –Roof Gardens
9. Applications/Landscaping –Vertical gardens

Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school's tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.

• Discuss the nature and scope of vertical gardens and roof gardens in horticulture today.
• Explain engineering considerations involved with the building of vertical and roof gardens, both on small and large scale projects.
• Select appropriate materials and plan the way in which the non living components of the garden is created, in order to achieve an appropriate and sustainable installation.
• Select appropriate climbing plants for creating vertical or roof gardens, and determine appropriate strategies to cultivate those plants, in a variety if different situations.
• Select appropriate plants for use in vertical or roof gardens, which are tolerant of the adverse growing conditions, having natural adaptations to growing under conditions that are encountered in these gardens.
• Select and plan the cultivation of plants that lack natural adaptations to growing on roofs or vertical gardens; but which are none the less required to grow in these adverse conditions;
• Explain a range of container growing techniques, in a range of different roof and vertical gardens, that may be used with a selection of different types of plants.
• Identify and evaluate problems with vertical and roof gardens, and compare options for solving those problems
• Plan the development of roof gardens for both small and large scale applications.
• Plan the development of vertical gardens for both small and large scale applications.