Garden rooms and garden buildings have come a long way from the humble garden shed. They are big business and range from the humble shed to full-on garden rooms, offices and dedicated garden spaces used for every conceivable occupation and hobby.

Garden rooms offered with a green roof are still relatively rare. Live-loading dictates that roofs must be built to take the weight of a green roof from the outset. This means they must be capable of handling the weight of waterproofing, filter fleece, root barrier, substrate and planting. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

In Bristol, Little Green Rooms are a young business based around a creative, bright and passionate team. They can manage the creative, the finance as well as the operational hands-on design, build and install of your very own hand-built garden room. Since 2021 the team has grown to nearly thirty people who install several hundred garden rooms across the South of England and Wales every year.

Thankfully, green roofing is becoming increasingly mainstream. The work that has been done by LGR has been mirrored by architects, garden designers, property developers and householders all of whom are working to improve eco-efficiency and to combat the effects of climate change.

Jack Shaw founded Little Green Rooms (LGR). He is a designer and furniture maker devoted to sustainability. So LGR has benefitted from his long-standing approach to innovation, creativity and attention to detail.

These garden rooms are no sheds. They look more architectural than functional and inside feel just like any room in your house. All Little Green Rooms’ buildings are designed to have a sedum green roof from the outset. Everything is handmade, all the all timber is sourced from well-managed forests, insulation comes from recycled plastic bottles and every order generates a donation to 9Trees who plant and manage native woodland across the UK. These are truly green garden rooms. Not only that but this is a true people business with green partners and profit-share across the business.

"We've been using sedum on our buildings since day one – for biodiversity, insulation and aesthetics. Harrowden's sedum is perfect for us, the coverage is great and it's really easy to handle and transport without losing substrate".

Chris Tozer - Creative Director

This approach is nothing if not all encompassing. Little Green Rooms have created a stylish, functional and sustainable solution to deliver the extra space so many of us crave. A space to work in, relax, or to develop ideas & hobbies. These garden rooms have been designed from the ground up with home working in mind. The ethos is “positive spaces have positive impacts.”  

Every garden room is designed to be warm in the depths of winter and cool in the warmest summer.

These are exactly the sort of credentials that we look for. Not surprisingly we are more than happy to support. So, in the last few days we have become a key supplier to Little Green Rooms. Our Sedum Flat Roof Kit is exactly what they need. In a noticeably short time, their customers have embraced sedum with all that means for pollinators and biodiversity.

There is a plethora of benefits associated with a sedum roof, not least that it creates a real talking point. The Enviromat® green roof kit comes with everything to turn a standard space into a delightful green roof, full of plants and flowers.

Components include a root barrier, a layer of specially engineered drainage mat to protect against damage to the sedum roof and the building itself, then comes dedicated matting that ensures excess water is wicked away from the roots to keep the green roof secure and healthy.

Last but by no means least is the Enviromat® sedum roof. Essentially, a pre-grown green roof mat consisting of a carrier fleece for easy handling, specially formulated growing medium and of course, sedum plants. 

Harrowden aims to mirror the sustainability shown by LGR. Enviromat® is grown outdoors, in the UK. It has a low carbon footprint and suits our climate well. Furthermore, there’s a lovely mix of plant species and it should flower for at least six months of the year.

Our patented carrier fleece contains recycled materials that hold the growing medium permanently in place. That means minimal substrate loss during the handling process, less fiddling about and less slippage once the blankets are in situ.

Not only that but sedums plants are quite easy to care for. They cope well with drought conditions so once established they will only need a very occasional watering in extremely dry weather.