The urban jungle, traditionally portraying the many streets, dense neighborhoods and packed areas of the city, is now becoming a lot more literal. You can now sit atop a building in the city, surrounded by green and nature. Sounds rather futuristic, right? But you don’t have to imagine the future as it is here. Ever considered roof replacement? How about replacing your roof with a green roof? In this post we share 5 inspiring rooftop gardens in Australia.

1 Secret Gardens, Sydney

In a sea of skyscrapers, one can escape the hustle and bustle of central Sydney at these secret gardens.

Planting around your house can be extremely hard in urban areas and with available garden space lacking in many cities, the installation of gardens on rooftops has become more and more popular. Transforming parapet roofs into a rooftop garden is easy. Take this roof in Seattle for example.

2 Condor Tower, Melbourne

This commercial building has a rooftop garden mainly used by staff members looking for a natural environment that is relaxing, fresh and easily accessible.  

3 M Central, Sydney

Truly an “island in the sky, the rooftop garden features a variety of native species and succulents hardy enough to withstand a harsh environment of direct sunlight and strong winds, a challenge for many rooftop gardens.

4 The Victorian Desalination Plant

Considered to be the largest rooftop garden or green roof in the Southern Hemisphere, the Victorian Desalination Plant boasts 26,000 square metres of garden. Not only does the roof store and clean rain water, it also provides a natural thermal insulation for the building thus minimising energy costs for the site. Repurposing old roof materials and other recycled materials were used throughout the garden and include recycled timber chips as an alternative to straight soil.

5 The Burnley Living Roofs

Green infrastructure, including the installation of plants on under-utilised urban surfaces, can provide significant benefits for our cities. In connection with HASSELL, The Burnley Living Roofs at the University of Melbourne's Burnley Campus were created to demonstrate to the wider community how green transformations can be achieved in our cities, aspiring to lead through example.