Quote:
Originally Posted by
pimachickens 
Sonoran Silkies, that is a fantastic idea! I think I'm going to copy that (because I don't have enough projects in progress already!).
Purslane gets my vote for what to plant. It is low, dense, thrives in our climate, and the chickens love it. Thanks for the great idea.
I love the idea of living roofs! When I was very young my grandmother showed me a picture of a house she lived in as a child that had a sod roof and I've been fascinated ever since. With a weird coincidence, TT! emailed me last week to bounce some ideas around for a living roof coop. I think it'd be especially hard in our climate, but I think it could be done if the coop got shade in the hottest parts of the day, say from 11am to 4pm. I agree that plant selection would be very important. I like the idea of purslane! I think that the biggest problem might be keeping chickens off the roof. The coop by Liz Jenkins in the link is BYC member Franklinchickens and from one of her last posts she said they were removing the living roof and replacing it with cedar shingles because they couldn't keep the chickens off. I've always admired that coop, especially the window she has from her home office that looks directly into her coop.
I have something somewhat similar on top of a tortoise burrow. I made it last fall and planted it with cuttings from very drought tolerant succulents and cacti I could gather from around the yard. It suffered from lack of watering over the winter, but it's hanging in there. It's made with a single layer of concrete blocks with a plywood cap, a layer of plastic, rocks around the edge and about 8" of soil on top. It's in the shade of a mesquite tree and faces east so it's fairly protected and only gets morning sun. We'll see how it fares in the summer heat. I had to work wire in around it to keep the chickens out. They just love the succulents. Not exactly a living roof coop, but a shorter, more compact facsimile.
