My lemons are bigger than yours

I consider myself very lucky to have a terrace in the city that is big enough to house Richard Schultz 1966 lounge chairs and an upstairs bright enough to nurture an extraordinarily fecund and fragrant lemon tree.

Yes, that really is a lemon from my tree in the picture, it is gigantic, and the tiny little plant currently bears 7 more lemons!!! Its immature branches cannot tolerate the weight of the fruit, so I have to prop each of them up with silly contraptions.

As much as I appreciate and love my little plant and my terrace, they pale....tremendously....in comparison to this Nolita rooftop ....er.... forest. My lemon tree suddenly feels very inept.






Chris and Lisa Goode's penthouse apartment atop a building in New York City's Little Italy is a gardener's dream. They started their sustainable green roof project four years ago, acting as their own general contractors and managing the hoisting of 5-ton soil bags by crane onto the roof, among other equally daunting tasks. I'd like to impress upon you the grandiosity of this outdoor place by giving you a few facts from the NY Mag article- It houses a honey-producing bee hive, monarch butterflies migrate through It, AND the little girl that lives there rides her tricycle on Its roof lawn and picks berries for her morning cereal from Its in-house berry bushes. OK, now just look at the pictures and gasp.


The modern penthouse pavilion is surrounded by Hornbeam trees and acanthus along the edge, a large black locust tree in the corner and a lemon tree on the deck.


"A bird’s-eye view, facing west, of the green roof, planted with succulents, sedums, and delospermas, atop the pavilion, as well as the lawn and decking of the pavilion below."


Through the glass is a greenhouse which harbors warm-weather plants like lemon and banana trees. This year, they ate bananas from their own tree!!!!


"The north-facing kitchen looks over a garden that includes squash, cherries, peaches, persimmons, fava beans, “every herb known to man,” and an espaliered apple tree."


Wildflowers, which vary by season.


Five egg-laying chickens roam one level below the wildflowers (yes, there are TWO levels of terrace)