Green roof

A green roof collects water, provides food for insects and can have a cooling effect in the summer. Because you provide more greenery in your neighborhood, you contribute to a healthy and pleasant living environment with plants on your roof. Discover more benefits and check whether your roof is suitable. Did you know that you can sometimes get a subsidy for a green roof?

Subsidy

A number of municipalities and water boards grant subsidies if homeowners want to build a sedum roof (with stonecrop) or roof garden. This has everything to do with the increasing flooding that the Netherlands has to deal with, under the influence of climate change. Sewers cannot always cope with the continuous downpours.

Green roofs help to collect some of that rainwater for your garden: the substrate layer and the plant roots retain the water and release it slowly. The more precipitation during downpours is collected by gardens, parks and green roofs, the less sewers are overloaded. Also read how you can collect rainwater with more greenery in your garden.

Tips for installing a green roof

Do you want to install a green roof on your existing home? Then bring in a specialist. Not every roof is suitable.

Check the Green Subsidy Guide to see if your municipality grants a subsidy for the construction of a green roof.

A sedum roof is lightweight and low maintenance. If you opt for a roof garden, have it examined whether your roof construction can handle this.

Green roof against particulate matter?

Do green roofs help filter particulate matter from the air? A single roof is not enough for that. Of course it does help a bit, just like every piece of greenery in your neighborhood. But large roofs, vertical gardens (green facades) or vegetated noise barriers along busy roads really help.

No insulation replacement

A green roof is insufficient as an insulation layer. The vegetation can contribute to the roof insulation – especially in the summer a green roof heats up less than a bitumen covering – but it is not a substitute for good roof insulation. On roof insulation you can read how to properly insulate a roof. Green roofs insulate noise better than a roof with bitumen or EPDM and a ballast layer. A vegetation roof can also extend the life of the waterproof layers of a roof by up to twenty years.