Review: The Rooftop Growing Guide by Annie Novak

Things are looking up for urban gardeners

I received The Rooftop Growing Guide from Blogging for Books  (a fun program that involves free books and a place to talk about them) in exchange for this review.


A public school that harvests lettuce from a rooftop greenhouse. An artist who crafts eclectic container gardens three stories above the street. A restaurant that harvests its greens from shipping containers on its roof. Annie Novak’s The Rooftop Growing Guide brings together wisdom from these and other green roof growers from around the world. Bursting with practical tips, intriguing farm profiles, helpful diagrams, and beautiful photographs, the Growing Guide equips and encourages gardeners and small scale farmers to cultivate the roofs around them.  


Aptly termed a guide, Novak’s book contains extensive information but no strict instructions. It offers considerations for the process of preparing a roof for farming, including legality, safety, and efficiency. In sections on soil and irrigation, it includes numerous charts comparing the benefits and potential problems of each option. The Growing Guide also explores factors that make plants thrive in a rooftop environment, and gives tools for understanding when and why they don’t.

Scattered throughout the Growing Guide, profiles of rooftop farms provide inspiration and insight. Farmers from Brooklyn, Rome, Portland, Chicago, and elsewhere share the stories of their rooftop farms, as well as their methods for growing everything from tomatoes to tilapia high above the ground. Each profile includes the location of the farm, the year it began, the total rooftop and planted space, the farm’s website, and photographs of crops and farmers.

The Growing Guide uses frequent photographs and diagrams to illustrate the straightforward text. The vibrant colors of the photographs and the mix of close ups and distance shots add visual appeal. Line drawings of hydroponic growing systems, self-watering containers, fungi, and the like support the book’s well organized charts and step-by-step instructions. Novak’s writing, conversational but focused, unifies the narrative, informational, and instructional sections of the book.

For the small scale farmer looking to expand or the urbanite developing a green thumb, The Rooftop Growing Guide combines advice for getting started, resources for ongoing trial and error, and inspiration from current rooftop farmers to create an informative and appealing book.