New Rooftop Garden in Durban

The Bidvest Top Turf team in the KwaZulu-Natal region recently completed a landscape installation on a rooftop in the Durban Central Business District.

The project was on the 4th floor of a building and consisted of creating a roof garden space in 17 individual planter boxes. Due to the tight access of the site it made for an interesting install with all material having to be taken up to the 4th floor one load at a time in a 1 ton vehicle and then wheelbarrowed into place.
The team installed a simple agricultural drainage system followed by the backfill of lightweight planting medium. In total, over a 120m³ of material was driven to the roof and carted into place over a 10-day period.

Chris Marais, Bidvest Top Turf General Manager in KZN says: "Once the planter boxes were filled, we could start with a plant pallet chosen by the client which included 11x 1000L Rauvolfia caffra (Quinine Tree). We had to get municipal permission to close-off 3 lanes of a 4 lane road in Durban Central and carried the work out on a Sunday to minimise disruption to the public."

The trees were hoisted into final position and planted with a crane. Fortunately, the weather played its part and without any wind affecting them, the team was able to get all planted and watered by noon that same day.

The remaining soil surface in the planters was filled with groundcovers, which have really filled out nicely over the last 3 months creating a relaxing upmarket garden in the heart of Durban.