Secret rooftop gardens gracing new Sydney apartment blocks - Adelaide Now

New apartment buildings in Sydney are including secret rooftop gardens including veggie patches, greenery and sun beds. Picture: Angie Basdekis Source: The Daily Telegraph

SECRET rooftop gardens are set to grace new apartment blocks in Sydney, offering vegetable beds, orchards and sunbathing lawns.

As urban farming builds momentum, developers are turning their backs on bare roofs, concrete barbecue areas and tennis courts, instead planting fruit orchards and large vegetable plots.

One development at Balmain is taking it to extremes - planting the entire 1300sq m roof of an apartment block with lawns, trees, and vegetables.

Rather than being restricted to potted plants, the beds will be deep enough to "produce something worthwhile".

"They can grow their own vegetables, their own fruit," Anka Property Developers director Vera Boyarsky said. "It's a garden experience on top of the building."

New apartment buildings in Sydney are including secret rooftop gardens including veggie patches, greenery and sun beds. Picture: Angie Basdekis

It follows demands for more gardening space, with Sydney City Council investigating a city farm, encouraging rooftop gardens and bringing in a policy on outdoor planter boxes on public footpaths after their popularity soared.

Sydney bars are getting involved too, with many growing their own herbs and hotels putting bees on their roofs, serving the honey at breakfast.

Buildings at Darling Harbour and Barangaroo are promising natives and grassed meadows on top, while Chippendale's $2 billion Central Park project will feature an outdoor "sky garden" for residents only.

Modelled on the High Line, a New York park built on a disused railway, the new Union Balmain roof will feature "roof-scaping", including a communal vegetable garden, grassed zones, barbecue areas and trees when it opens in 2015.

Vera Boyarsky of Anka Property Group. Picture: James Croucher

"I don't think the area has seen anything like it," Ms Boyarsky said.

Ms Boyarsky said it made the most of city and harbour views along the 140m length, without the expensive on-going demands of apartment gyms and swimming pools.

"I think one should make use of roof space. It is valuable space. It gives the apartments a wonderful vista," she said.